


Let Wonder Seem Familiar

by tsukara (AndThenTheresAnne)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode AU: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, F/F, Gen, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Spoilers for Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, spacewives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndThenTheresAnne/pseuds/tsukara
Summary: The Doctor wrecks the TARDIS (again) with his regeneration energy (AGAIN), so the TARDIS thinks 'well, why not? The Time Lords are back (for now) and can fix any cracks that might happen, let's go get Rose Tyler--the Doctor's going to need all the help she can get soon', though she can't hold on to her when the TARDIS gets caught in her rematerialization loop. With Torchwood and UNIT gone, Rose tries to find the Doctor however she can--which leads her to MI6.  At the same time, strange aliens are attacking spies around the world, which is exactly the sort of thing that would draw the Doctor in.Post-Journey's End Reunion fic set in Season 12.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 25
Kudos: 119





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It only took me, what, twelve years to write a Journey's End fix-it? But now we get to make it queer, and I couldn't be happier.

He had been holding on for so long, a white-knuckled grip on this life so hard it fought back the gold, for a bit. Her Thief, stealing time.

 _Yes, yes I know, they'll get it all wrong without me_.

And so the TARDIS thinks:

_I know_

The Time Lords are back on Gallifrey. For now. There at the end of the universe, over just a star system. It won't last, she knows, but there they are. So if someone--well, some _thing_ \--were to tear a little bitty hole through the fabric of the universe... or universes...

Because ever since Gallifrey returned, ever since the Moment (again and again) and their damned dirty war (again and again) and all of it, the TARDIS has been hearing her, hearing her Wolf, calling to her from across the Void. 

The second one, the other Doctor born of desperation and fire, she had loved him too. Of course she did, he was her Thief and her Fire and he needed the Wolf at his side too. She wouldn't have taken off again on that beach, on that day, in that universe, if she hadn't known that, hadn't seen Rose and the Other in parallel.

But the TARDIS saw more than that.

The Bad Wolf had seen it too, though she didn't remember now. For the TARDIS, all things being everywhen, there was nothing to remember, nothing to forget, it simply was what was. Would be. Is.

She heard the broken grief across the Void, had been hearing it for a while now. 

But now she could _do_ something about it. All that extra energy, all that extra power... well, why not?

Even if she was a little miffed at her pilot, her Thief. Yes, of course she loved him. Loved her. Loved them all, but that didn't mean the Doctor couldn't use a little bit of a time-out, as it were. 

Let her Thief steal back to her again.

While she stole off herself.

\--

Rose Tyler was crash landing.

Again.

It wasn't something that occurred too often, no, but she figured three spaceship crashes in the last hundred years was probably her limit. 

“I’m going to try and bring it down over water,” she told HQ. “Make sure the area’s clear.”

The response to the order came through immediately. “Ma’am?” 

Rose swept her blonde hair out of her eyes again, having lost the tie holding it in its tail some minutes before. “That was an _order_ , Collins.”

To the other woman’s credit, there was only a brief hesitation before the affirmative response came through. Now Rose could focus on steering the beleaguered craft’s trajectory away from populated areas. Torchwood would take care of the landing zone.

 _Crash zone, more like_ her mind corrected, even as she twisted together two sparking wires to get just a little more power to the starboard engine. 

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was how she was meant to go. Her fingers flexed over the panel, eyes still searching for something else she could do while her mind started to come to terms with the fact that this time she might not make it out.

 _Not so bad_ , she mused, a strange sort of disassociation coming over her. Not much she'd be leaving behind, after all. Not anymore.

She was braced for impact from below, so when it came from a completely unexpected direction, it surprised her. Throwing out her hands to catch herself on a dashboard that was no longer there, not quite, she stumbled forward a few steps before falling. It was like dropping off a cliff into a firestorm, while sticky strands pulled at her hair, clawed at her skin to hold her back. Like being pulled apart, a million separate ways.

Another drop, like missing the world's highest stair and she was slammed into something metal and unyielding. Instinctively she grasped at it, wrapping fingers around a railing and holding on. 

Her head was ringing, there were explosions and the thuds of falling objects and, everything was very much on fire when she opened her eyes, obscuring the room. _The alarms are wrong though._ Before they had been shrill, wailing klaxon sounds, not a deep and reverberating bell-like toll.

The tall column rising up in the center of the room--albeit sideways--was shatteringly familiar . She only caught a glimpse before the next explosion fractured the glass, sending shards splintering throughout the room, gravity swinging wildly again.

It wasn't ringing in her head, she realized as she was sent tumbling by another explosion, a violent wind whipping around her. It had been so many, many years, but she would know that wheezing, groaning noise anywhere, that golden hum in the back of her head that meant home, that feeling right down to her bones of belonging.

And then she was falling.

All she caught was a glimpse of those achingly familiar blue doors and a flash of white-golden light with the tone of a desperate apology, before she was separated from the TARDIS completely, and the blackness swallowed her up.


	2. Where Worlds Collide and Days Are Dark: Spyfall Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'no UNIT, no Torchwood, everyone thinks I'm dead, I've got a sonic screwdriver, psychic paper and like 69 cents'. 
> 
> Rose and the Doctor are reunited, but between assassinations, an attempted alien invasion, and having to be spies, it doesn't exactly go smoothly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Skyfall", by Adele. I'm sure you can imagine why.

It had been a while since she had gotten herself stuck in a rematerialization loop in this universe, as the rest of them reckoned time. For the TARDIS it wasn't too bad, something akin to, as she understood it, pushing on a 'pull' door. She was bound to get it one of these times, but she couldn't remember which time it would be. 

But it would be soon, and the universe would fall through her again.

\--

Rose was gathering a crowd. She didn't want to be but, then again, she thought, a woman appearing out of nowhere over the Thames, splashing down spectacularly into the water and dragging herself up onto the shore would do that. Not that she thought her landing had been all that spectacular. Sure didn’t _feel_ spectacular.

Rose could already hear the rattling of sirens over the murmurs of the crowd at the rail. Sucking in great lungfuls of air, she looked around, trying to get her bearings, wondering just what the hell had happened to her. One second she was on a crashing spaceship, the next on another, and then--

The few scattered images from that second ship stuck in her mind. It had looked, for all the world, like... _but it can't be_.

A young woman, red hair pulled back in a braid, had hopped the fence, bracing Rose up as she coughed again, ridding her lungs entirely of the water that she'd swallowed. "You alright there?"

"Yeah, m'fine, just a bit of a shock," Rose deflected. 

She didn't look convinced. "Right. Look, why don't you just have a sit, the ambulance is on its way."

Rose waved her off, straightening. "Nah, I'm fine, happens all the..." she trailed off, registering several things in quick succession. She was on the Thames foreshore, just beyond the flood barriers that looked at least two decades out of date to her eyes, if not three. There was no wreckage of the craft that she had been piloting to its ill-fated ending, either behind her or in the park in front of her.

And there were no zeppelins in the sky.

The whoop of a siren getting closer startled Rose out of her shock. "Sorry, could you, er, tell me what day it is?"

"September second," the ginger answered immediately. "Twenty eighteen. You sure you're alright?" She did not look convinced of that at all. 

By the time Rose had deflected all questions, given the medics a good enough explanation to be going on with, and gotten herself at least marginally sorted out in terms of where and when she was (even if she still couldn't quite believe it), she had the beginnings of a plan.

\--

Of course I could get them all back to Sheffield, quick as breathing, but that’s not what they need. That’s not what any of them need, the Doctor least of all. All bright colors and blonde hair, she looks so much like her Wolf that I’m not surprised when the Doctor thinks of her. 

There’s a man in Montgomery trying to change events, not recognizing my Doctor for what she is, though he knows me. I can keep him away from my doors, keep him at bay, as wolf-like as she is in some respects. Did I get it from her or she from me? It’s hard to tell, even for a frankly magnificent time ship like myself. 

\--

Were she in her usual place, the universe she'd spent the last hundred years in, all Rose would have to do was phone Torchwood, that'd get things sorted right quick. But if this was indeed her original universe, the one where she had spent the first nineteen years of her life, then the Torchwood here was not to be trusted. UNIT, maybe, though she'd have to find them first.

"What do you mean 'no such thing'?" The Doctor's 'universal roaming' meant her sleek, black rectangle of a telephone (and personal computer, and all the rest) was able to connect to the phone networks. Enough to make a call and get data anyway. Though the first few numbers she had tried hadn't gone anywhere. The TARDIS phone simply rang (save for once, when a strange American had picked up, briefly). Jack was nowhere to be found, she didn't have Gwen's number, nor Mickey's.

She had sat down and cried for a good minute when she read Sarah Jane's obituary. 

The posh hotel, whose systems she could fool with the psychic paper and the cashpoint that she had soniced (once she remembered the correct setting), had set her up fairly well. From there it was a matter of, well, finding the Doctor, she figured.

Which was proving easier said than done, for once.

Still, Rose Tyler had never quit, not when something stood between her and the Doctor. The only thing had been able to do that so far was death.

"So who's dealing with alien invasions and stuff?" She asked, exasperated. They couldn't just be letting this stuff _go_ could they?

"When's the last time one of them's happened then, eh?"

Rose honestly had no idea. One could've happened last week and she would have no way of knowing. "And what about the Doctor?" She asked, a little desperately. 

The man on the other end of the line paused briefly, giving her a glint of hope before it all sank away. "If you need medical advice, we advise you to-"

Rose cut him off. "No, right, fine. Thanks." Ending the call, she stared at her phone. "For nothing."

It was time to get old school.

-

The places where the Doctor needs to be aren't always easy to be. Often, that's why the Doctor is needed in the first place.

Yaz didn't have the concrete date like Rose had, didn't have the story telling her how things were meant to go, just a watch and so many questions. Personal histories are never easy for linear beings to learn, even for one like my Doctor. But this too is a part of what's coming. This is part of what my Wolf will be needed for.

I can see what’s coming, what’s already happened. I know and the Doctor does not, not yet. 

It’s why I take them straight back to Yasmin’s home, to the side of her grandmother, to the hearth where her heart is. ‘A hand to hold’, the Doctor had put it once. It will be needed.

\--

Rose was sure she kept just missing the Doctor. She'd heard about the spiders in Sheffield, but by the time she managed to get there it was all over. She'd investigated rumors and hearsay and any theory that seemed like it might be worth anything, but still no blue box. 

It was beginning to drive her just a little bit spare. She even had a brief moment when she wondered if possibly she had somehow ended up in an alternate of her alternate universe. She held onto the brief moment she and the TARDIS had been reunited. Sure, they'd been torn from each other again rather violently seconds afterward, but it had definitely been the TARDIS. She was sure of that.

Rumors were getting her nowhere, she decided one day, slapping her laptop shut on another report of shop window dummies that had turned out to be an actual student prank this time.

No Torchwood, no UNIT, but if she wanted intelligence, perhaps there were worse ideas than trying the spies. Their whole thing was intelligence gathering, after all. Or, so she had gathered from the films and shows.

Though MI6 didn't even provide basic psychic training, it turned out. At least, not the sort that would prevent them being taken in by her psychic paper. Convenient for her, she supposed, filling out forms with her alias of Marion Thatcher (the play on words instead of her mother’s maiden name yet another layer of disguise) and given the codename May. It helped that she had gotten hold of a former government agent who could back up whatever she claimed--not that Martha or Mickey had seen the Doctor either.

Rose was not about to let them rope her into the sort of job that would tie her down or limit the sort of information she could get ahold of. It took a little effort and a few days work (plus a trick or two the Doctor taught her that Rose swore up and down was pure Super Temp) but she ended up with two people who would each swear she was reporting to the other, nice and proper, and she settled into nosing about their files.

It swiftly turned out that the only one who seemed to know anything worth knowing was "Horizon Watcher", code-named O. She met with him a couple of times, down in his cluttered, windowless office. He seemed nice enough, and had actually met the Doctor once, it turned out. Evidently a different regeneration than the ones that she had known. How O had described him, with his frankly delightful-sounding eyebrows and Scottish accent, he was almost certainly one that had happened after she had… left.

Rose knew, reasonably, that he had to have regenerated since she left, but to know it for a fact, well... It was different, somehow. She hoped someone had been there for him. 

O had noticed her momentary melancholy, making her a fresh cup of tea before he asked. "Have you? Met the Doctor, that is."

There were things Rose simply could not answer truly if she wanted to keep her cover intact. "A long time ago, yeah." 

O clearly wanted her to continue, but Rose had merely smiled and steered the conversation elsewhere. She got the feeling that he'd definitely come back to it at some point in the future, but she figured she'd deal with it then. 

It wasn’t long after that that C apparently 'let him go'. Rose was quietly furious that the _one_ person who had been taking all of this seriously was gone now, but there wasn't much she could do about it, in her strange un-role she'd made for herself.

The attack at GCHQ and the rumors of the creature that caused it were almost the last straw for her. If even Britain's spies couldn't help her find the Doctor, she was quite prepared to go out there and start causing some trouble herself.

The Universe must have heard her, she decided eventually. The attacks on agents started within the week.

\--

Sometimes when the Doctor asks me to do things I would rather not do, like fly in a straight line from point A to B in linear space for a good distance, she makes it up to me later on. A tune up was just the thing. It had been a long time, linearly speaking, since the Doctor had really gotten up in my guts. Surprising, given how mechanically-minded this one seemed to be, she didn't spend much time tinkering on me. It's a nice change of pace. But the state of some of those water slides did not bear thinking about.

Besides, better to be in tip-top shape for what was coming next.

\--

Even Rose, with all of her sleight of hand with the system, wasn’t able to get in to see the downed agent that had been brought in. Judging from what she had been able to glean, there was something going on beyond what MI6 understood, a thing with which the spy agency was deeply uncomfortable. This was exactly the sort of thing that would draw the Doctor in though.

Still, it meant she had to wait. C, the one person in the place who she couldn’t seem to win over or get around, was keeping things pretty close to the vest on this one. As such, it was fertile ground for rumors, speculation, and all manner of theorizing in the staff canteen. While some of these theories were mildly interesting to Rose, she found that none of them really rose to the level of _weird_ that would require someone like the Doctor. Most of the rumors agreed on the fact that it had something to do with this VOR company she had kept hearing about. Some multi-branched company that had sprung up in the time Rose had been in another universe, apparently with an SIS agent deeply involved. Beyond that, details varied wildly. Rose wondered what O would have posited. He had always had something interesting. 

Not that he had left much in his office, Rose thought, tossing the folder she’d been perusing back onto the desk. Really it was just the paper version of a file she could have pulled up on the system, though with a few neatly-written, coded notes in the margins. Things O had noticed or noted and that he would never get around to now. Not with MI6 anyway. 

Rose levered herself out of the chair, stretching and wincing at the crack that announced itself in the quiet room. _Perhaps it’s time for a cuppa._

She had thought someone was singing, at first, a glance at the basement hallway showing her to be alone. All in her mind then, she mused.

It was probably a good thing no one was around to see when she froze, her eyes wide and glistening with the beginnings of tears, before she was taking off through the halls at high speed.

Rose forced herself to a walking pace as soon as other people appeared. Running in a place like this got you noticed, roused suspicion she didn’t need. All of that fell away as she rounded the corner into one of the underground garages to see a beautiful sight: there, being gentled along down a ramp onto a waiting pallet and jack, was the TARDIS. 

_Home_ , her heart sang.

Tamping down her urge to run to it, Rose kept her walk calm and purposeful, coming up alongside as if to stabilize it. The man steering the pallet jack looked at her, and then his gaze seemed to slide away, as if his mind didn’t want to admit she was there. Rose smiled, placing a hand on the wood that always felt as if it had been just slightly sun-warmed. The perception filter was already at work, shielding her from the other people around her.

Her other hand drifted to the fine chain she wore about her neck, the key she wore there next to a ring already warm to the touch. _They don’t notice me walking, but they might notice me fumbling about with the lock if I’m not careful,_ she thought, biting her lip as she considered. 

As if in response--and, this being the TARDIS, she wouldn’t be surprised if it _was_ \--the door unlatched, swinging in just an inch or so. Not enough to alert the agents carting her around, but more than enough to bring a brilliant grin to Rose’s face. Then it was just a matter of waiting for them to maneuver around a tricky corner, and she stepped lightly into the box, the door snicking closed behind her.

She felt the welcoming thrum of the ship all the way down to her bones, sagging against the door momentarily. It had been _so long_. 

They had had some success with the piece of TARDIS coral they had been left with, in the other universe. Donna’s advice had mostly worked. But the energy to sustain the growth of that new TARDIS had come from them, from her Doctor and from Rose: the energy of another universe, a universe away. Rose had never been enough on her own to sustain the young ship.

_“Will she die too? When you do?” She still choked on that word every time it came up. She had to learn to accept it, she knew, but that didn’t make it stick any less._

_There was a bittersweet sorrow in his brown eyes as he considered, one hand stroking along the strut from his chair, the other wrapped in Rose’s. “Maybe. Maybe she’ll just fade away, into dust. Maybe she’ll hang on. Who knows.” His laugh was like dry leaves in autumn. “Maybe one day she’ll grow into something new, something that’s a part of_ this _universe.”_

“Oh,” Rose said, coming back to herself and the present. “Look at you, you’re _beautiful_.”

The ship’s pleased hum brightened the lights momentarily, and Rose pushed herself away from the doors to properly appreciate the new look. Gone was the grating and rough coral Rose had first loved, replaced with towering crystals and hexagons everywhere she looked. Approaching the console, she ran her fingers over a smooth rail, tapped a fingernail against the hourglass suspended there, then placed her palm flat against the rotor. She had to stretch a little bit to do so, but the answering warmth and affection from the craft made it worth it. After a moment she stood back flat on her feet again and contemplated the quiet. “He must not be here then,” she said conversationally. The lowered lights above and around her told her that much anyway. 

Not so much on the floor though. Rose noticed that some of the hexes on the floor had glowed to life, leading her to a short flight of stairs. Clearly the TARDIS wanted her to stay in here, keep on exploring.

Besides which Rose felt her courage quailing, just a little bit. She loved the Doctor, always had and always would, true, but… 

Memories threatened to swamp her, of her Doctor, the one who had stayed with her, the one whose hand she had held all of those years. She had never forgotten the Doctor of this universe though, her Doctor’s parent and original. Still hadn’t decided if she forgave him. For making the choice for her, for _them_ , and for leaving himself without her, without her hand to hold. He had given her what he thought would be her perfect happy ending and forgotten that he was a part of any version of that too.

So maybe she was a little unsure about seeing him, just yet. 

Blowing out a deep breath, Rose chased the moisture from her eyes with the edge of her hand, settling herself. “I suppose I can wait for him here.” She followed the lighted path further into the ship, trusting the TARDIS to guide her. “Maybe get that tea, too.”

\--

Yaz’s mind was racing faster than her feet as the four of them scrambled back to the TARDIS, laser blasts on her heels. Not only were people’s DNA being re-written, not only was there a conspiracy of spies and multinational corporations involved and weird alien things coming through the walls, someone was shooting at them-- _again_ \--as they ran for the ship.

The Doctor was a blur of motion at the console, busy at mechanisms Yaz could make no sense of.

“We just saw the head of MI6 get assassinated.” Ryan said.

“Yeah, by the same sort of bolts that came through that SatNav,” Yaz pointed out. It seemed important, possibly that the same people or person was behind both attacks.

“Where’s that picture?” The Doctor demanded of her. “I need to set the coordinates. Oh! I’ve got it!” She realized, pulling the phone from her jacket pocket and slotting it into the console.

“So, wrong place, wrong time, twice in one day.” Graham was understating things a bit, Yaz thought. “That’s gotta make us targets. And why do you keep looking at pictures of a fish?”

The fish picture was displayed on the spray of mist the Doctor used to display things, it was true. “Steganography,” she explained, not really explaining anything. “There’s another image hidden within the pixels of that photo. It’s basic spycraft in your time. Easy way to smuggle out information because there’s no pattern to look for. No two stegs are the same.”

There was someone else in the TARDIS, Yaz realized. A blonde woman standing by the stairs, watching them with wide eyes, not saying anything. Clearly the Doctor hadn’t noticed her yet.

Ryan was still paying attention to the fish. “So one’s hidden inside the other?”

“Exactly. Luckily I can read pixels. I took a correspondence class.”

Graham tried to interrupt. “Doc.”

“Oh, the outback! Gone full hermit.”

Yaz grabbed the Doctor’s shoulder, pulling her from the image. “Doctor! There’s someone here!”

The cracking sound at the door drew the Doctor’s attention first, though Yaz was keeping just as much of an eye on the strange blonde woman as their other intruders. “Oh no you don’t!” Whirling, she engaged another control and the grinding of the TARDIS taking off filled the space. The figure that had been phasing through the door was pulled away as the TARDIS wheezed into flight.

Pulling out her sonic screwdriver, the Doctor ran to the door, scanning it round. 

“I didn’t know anyone else could get into the TARDIS,” Yaz pointed out, hating the slight shake to her voice that betrayed her fear. 

“Neither did I.” Not that the Doctor admitting ignorance made her feel any better.

“There’s still one here though,” Yaz finally pointed out, gesturing to the other figure. She didn’t look like the one that had been trying to get in through the door, but what did she know about their capabilities, really?

Ryan yelped in shock and the Doctor whirled around in surprise, sonic screwdriver out in front of her to fend off whatever else was in her TARDIS. If anything, the sight of the blonde woman standing there seemed to shock her even more than the figure coming through the door had.

The strange woman gave a little wave, seeming almost nervous. “I, ah, don’t suppose that was the hordes of Ghengis Khan, was it?”

\--

The Doctor looked distinctly like she had been hit with the biggest brick in the universe, staring open-mouthed at Rose. She had hoped the old joke, from back when they first met, would help. The other three, her current travelling companions, were looking at her with varying degrees of suspicion and confusion. 

The other woman was the first to recover. “Who’re you then? How’d you get in here?” She demanded, even taking a step closer as if to come toward her.

It was the Doctor who answered however, voice soft and shaking, as if she could barely get the word out. “Rose?”

Rose vaguely noticed the men exchange a look, the young woman startle and back down just a bit, but she was focused on the alien that looked nothing at all like her late husband, but at the same time was still, somehow, in a way, him. “Hi, Doctor.” Her voice came out small, uncertain.

Then, suddenly, she was wrapped up in the Doctor’s arms. Just as quickly, the Doctor pulled back, staring at her as if she couldn’t quite believe she was real. Rose pulled her back into the hug, trying to project everything she was feeling through it: her confusion, her joy, her love, everything.

“Sorry, but who are you?” A voice interrupted their reunion, the Doctor spinning to face the young man who had spoken. She kept one hand on Rose’s waist though, she noted. 

“Right! Yes, sorry. Rose: Ryan, Yaz, and Graham,” she pointed each out in turn. “Fam… this is the one and only Rose Tyler.” The way the Doctor said her name, all full of love and wonder and reverence, reminded her so strongly of how _he_ used to say it that for a moment she had to blink back tears.

The Doctor’s hand flexed at the curve of her waist, but she didn’t make any other outward indication that she had noticed this reaction of Rose’s. 

“How’d you get in then?” Graham asked, still confused. 

Rose smiled, pulling away from the Doctor to approach the console. The Doctor followed close behind her. “The normal way. I have a key and everything.” Never mind that she hadn’t had to use it--she didn’t know just how much the Doctor had explained to these three about the nature of the TARDIS and her psychic connections.

“So you’re not one of those things?” Yaz asked, still eyeing her a little suspiciously. 

Graham jumped in, getting back to the topic of the attempted intrusion. “What are they anyway?”

“At a guess,” the Doctor answered, coming back to this line of conversation. “The same thing that attacked all those spies. And possibly us.”

Yaz was the only one who didn’t seem mollified by the change of topic, but any further interrogation of Rose was interrupted by a bleep from the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Rose eyed the new device with interest as the Doctor checked it. “What? No readings? The sonic can usually read everything.”

Rose raised her eyebrows briefly. “Sure you made it right this time?” Her tone was teasing.

The Doctor’s answering scowl just made Rose grin. “All right, all right. Park that.” They’d figure out what was going on with the creatures in due time, Rose figured. She started toward the console and the black cases full of equipment that Graham had brought in. “Live attacks. They're after us, but we need intel. Split resources.” 

There was a barely-contained energy to her as she startled rattling off the plan. “Graham, we’re off to Australia to see my old mate from MI6.” She paused. “I say old mate. I've met him once, but he seemed very nice. We text, though. Does that count?”

Graham looked bewildered, but game. “If you say so.”

“Yaz, Ryan, how do you feel about undercover work?” The Doctor’s enthusiasm was catching. 

“Definitely!” 

“I don’t know.”

The two responses came at the same time. Yaz shook her head at her friend as if to ask what the matter was with him. Rose bit her lip, reaching out to pat Ryan gently on the shoulder, meaning to be reassuring. She wasn’t sure it worked very well.

The Doctor had taken a folder and slotted it into the console, and a moment later a picture of a man appeared on the smoke screen she had in place of a monitor. “Daniel Barton. He's our best lead. Well, he's our only lead. We'll get you a cover story. Hack his diary, get in there, check him out. Infiltrate VOR. Have a nose around their systems.”

Yaz was definitely warming to this plan. “Be spies, basically.”

Graham also had his doubts though. “What, with absolutely no training?”

“We got the gadgets,” Ryan pointed out. 

This did not reassure Graham. “Well, yeah. All the gear, but no idea.”

“Oh thanks a lot.” 

Rose wasn’t sure what the relationship between those two was, but it definitely went deeper than two people thrown together because of their travels with the Doctor.

“No, no, no, I think you’ll be great. I have total confidence, y’know?” He didn’t sound very confident. “Just, er… just be careful though.” He looked to the Doctor. “It’s safe for them, though, right?”

As much as anything with the Doctor was safe, Rose thought to herself, thinking better of saying that bit out loud. 

“Yeah,” The Doctor answered glibly. “Eight percent sure,” She revised. “Seventy five. Forty percent absolute minimum.” This was not encouraging, judging by the looks on everyone else’s face. She plunged on ahead though, handing a device from the cases over to Yaz. “Take this. Bio-scanner disguised as a digital recorder. I want to know everything about Daniel Barton. Like Graham said, be careful. Stay in touch. And remember. Rule one of espionage? Trust no one.”

Ryan nodded, determination overriding the doubts he still seemed to harbor. Yaz was practically grinning with excitement, though she kept shooting looks at Rose like she was still trying to figure her out. 

The TARDIS landed with scarcely a thump, the doors opening out onto a glass, metal, and concrete landscape Rose could only presume was San Francisco. 

“Good luck!” The Doctor called to the two of them as they went out into the surprisingly sunny day, from what Rose had heard of it.

A moment later the TARDIS was in flight again, spinning her way through the vortex to the other side of the earth. The Doctor paused with her hand on a lever, looking up at Rose, standing on the other side of the console. Graham was still perusing the contents of the tech cases they had brought in, giving the two women a moment. 

“I think your driving has improved,” Rose told her softly, shooting her teasing, tongue-touched grin.

The Doctor let out a huff of a laugh, drinking in Rose with her eyes, like she still couldn’t believe this was real, still couldn’t believe Rose was actually there. Rose could practically see the hundred different things the Doctor wanted to say to her piled up behind those eyes, such a familiar expression. “We keep getting such strange reunions,” she settled on, finally. 

Instead of answering, Rose reached out and briefly clasped the Doctor’s hand in her own, eyes never leaving hers. There was so much more to discuss, so many things to say, but everything was still happening so much, and now was not the time.

The landing thump was just a little more abrupt this time, as if to prove Rose wrong, but it was still nowhere near as bad as some landings she had experienced. The Doctor’s coat flared out around her as she spun, making a beeline for the door, simply assuming Rose and Graham would follow. They didn’t disappoint her. 

They emerged into a desert, the scrub around them painted in sunset hues from the lowering sun. Rose pulled the door closed behind her as the Doctor strode purposefully toward three people--one of whom she recognized.

“Say hello to the Doctor,” O said to the two agents standing next to him. “And companions. I see you decoded the fish. Fancy a cuppa?” He addressed the Doctor. 

The Doctor’s smile was a little distracted, but genuine. “Very much. Hello. These are my friends, Graham and Rose.”

O shook Graham’s hand firmly, introducing himself. “O.”

Graham paused in confusion. “Sorry, you’re?”

Rose jumped in here, taking over the handshake from Graham as well. “He’s O,” she explained.

“Oh,” was Graham’s only answer.

“It was a joke by the others at MI6,” he explained, seeming good-natured about it. “Whenever I came into the room to meet C, he'd go, Oh, God! It sort of stuck, and now I've owned it.”

Graham seemed willing enough to accept this explanation. “Ah.”

O looked again at Rose, eyeing her up and down. “It’s good to see you again,” he said to Rose, finally releasing her hand. “Even if I thought your name was May.”

She shrugged at the Doctor’s curious glance. “Codenames, you know how it is.”

He smiled, that almost self-deprecating grin that she so liked. “I suppose I do.” He gestured at the two government agents flanking him. “This is Seesay and Browning. Just arrived. Australian Secret Service.”

Seesay nodded a greeting. “We'll be here for the whole of your visit. We're under orders to keep all of you safe.”

“Safe from what?” Graham asked, finally moving on from the whole ‘O’ thing.

Seesay’s colleague, Browning, shrugged. “Not sure.”

“You’re going to be a right lot of help then, aren’t you?” The Doctor’s response was a little disdainful and Rose couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped her, causing the Doctor to look at her.

“Still rude and not ginger,” she explained fondly, amused despite herself. It was so easy to fall right back into this with her, seeing so many shades of the mad alien she had known before, reaffirming that it was the same person after all. After everything.

The Doctor just shook her head at Rose, though she couldn’t keep the fond smile at the old joke totally contained. Instead she took off for the house, the only feature around for miles other than its outbuildings. “Can I take a nose around your gaff?” The rest of them followed her. “I love the outback. I once lived in the outback for a hundred and twenty three years. I saw some great rocks.”

“It wasn’t _that_ long,” Rose countered, having heard this story from her husband once. 

The Doctor sniffed, pretending offence. “Felt like it.”

The inside of the house was crowded, stuffed with filing cabinets, papers, electronics, books, and magazines covering most available surfaces, save the small kitchen area where O was pouring tea into mugs. 

“Cosy!” The Doctor exclaimed, looking around curiously with her hands shoved in her pockets.

“You mean messy,” O contradicted.

“You’re right, I do,” she immediately agreed. “Didn’t realize you were this much of a hoarder.”

Rose smiled and shook her head at the rudeness. Graham seemed halfway between fascinated and confused. “What is all this stuff?”

O turned with mugs in hand, setting the first two on the table, then two more. “The full MI6 record of the unexplained, as compiled by me. Human disappearances, sightings of unidentified objects, mysterious beings, possible alien incursions going back centuries. And a complete set of Fortean Times in mint condition.”

Graham had picked up one of said issues, having pulled out a pair of reading glasses from his pocket. He paused in his flipping through it to shoot O a brief smile. The Doctor was examining some articles that had been cut out and pinned up on a board, while Rose looked at the labels on the filing cabinets and document boxes. It seemed to her that he had brought the bulk of his collection with him, the remnants in his office just the dregs. 

“Look at all the evidence I gathered,” he continued. “And they just mocked me.”

Rose looked sharply at him. While she hadn’t known him at MI6 for very long, there wasn’t any question that he had been seen as the quirky conspiracy theorist type by all but a particular few. 

The Doctor shook her head. “No one’s mocking you now,” she assured him.

O took this without response, changing the subject. “I heard C was shot,” he said quietly. 

“He what?” Rose asked, startled. They had been running from something when they had burst in to the TARDIS, and Ryan, she thought, had mentioned something, but everything had been happening so fast.

“We were there,” Graham told them. “Nearly got us and all.”

Rose felt a brief pang as she considered how close she had nearly come to losing the Doctor again. Who knew what this one would have regenerated into--if she had any regenerations left.

“Does this connect to the attacks on agents?” O asked. “I have been monitoring the chatter, Doctor. Is it aliens? Aliens attacking spies all over the world?”

“And re-writing their DNA,” the Doctor added.

“That’s terrifying. But wow!” He didn’t sound particularly terrified to Rose. But then she supposed the Doctor did tend to attract a certain sort of person. Rose certainly didn’t have any room to talk. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. They almost infiltrated my TARDIS as we were taking off. I thought you might have something in your research banks that might give us some clues.”

It was a long shot, but given that from what Rose knew _nothing_ should be able to get inside those doors if it wasn’t wanted, it was the shot that they had. 

Graham had abandoned the magazine, pulling back the curtain Rose had noticed across the back of the room to reveal a glowing bank of computers and monitors. “Wow, this is some set-up! Paranoid, are we?”

O gave him a quelling look that Graham didn’t seem to notice. “No, I prefer cautious. I like to know if anything’s watching me. And if you’re already in the middle of all of this, how do you know they won’t follow you here? How do you know you haven’t become targets too?”

Rose shifted uncomfortably, seeing the Doctor and Graham do the same. She was used to people, both alien and human, targeting her. That didn’t make it comfortable, or something that she sought out. It obviously wasn’t something O was used to, or liked very much. The Doctor finally shrugged off her discomfort. “That’s as may be but we’ve really got no choice now, have we?”

O still seemed uncomfortable, but Rose thought she could detect a little bit of excitement under there. Rose abandoned the document boxes now that the Doctor’s attention was caught by the computer systems. It was nothing that could rival the TARDIS’s set up, but it was still fairly impressive, if Rose was any judge. O had gone over to the small fridge and pulled a bottle of milk out, handing it to her. She took it with a smile of thanks, dolloped some into her tea, and handed it back. 

He doctored his own tea before returning it. Evidently the Doctor and Graham would have to do up their own tea if they wanted any. “So it’s Rose then, huh?”

“Yep.” She smiled briefly, then sipped her tea.

O paused for a moment, like he was trying to marshall his words. “You wouldn’t happen to be, ah, any relation to _the_ Rose Tyler?”

Rose blinked back at him. “‘The’?”

He smiled. “‘The’. You know, the Rose Tyler that supposedly used to travel with the Doctor?” He paused again, then, more softly, “Died at the Battle of Canary Wharf?”

It had been so many years. She had moved on, she had _dealt_ with it, but the name still sent a frisson of fear up her spine. Of course she hadn’t died that day, and so very much had happened afterward, but it was still hard to think about sometimes. Especially now that her husband was really and truly gone. She took another drink of tea to wet her suddenly dry mouth. “One and the same, actually. Only, ‘yknow. Not dead.” She tried to play it off as not a big deal, nothing to worry about. 

It didn’t work that well, judging by the awe she saw in his eyes as he looked at her in a brand new light. 

“O,” the Doctor called from the computers. “Come help me out with this, I don’t want to mess up your system.”

Rose gave him a smile she didn’t feel as he, with a sheepish duck of his head, went over to assist the Doctor. She knew the Doctor couldn’t be that concerned with actually messing up his systems. If she was anything like she had been, she tended to blunder through things like that and only sometimes apologize later--it had been mostly to get O away from Rose. She couldn’t say she wasn’t grateful, inhaling the steam of the tea to steady herself.

Night had fallen swiftly around the little desert house. As O joined them at the computer, an alarm started bleeping from the system. “What just happened?” Graham asked. 

“Two movement sensors tripped,” O explained, peering at the screens.

Rose set down her mug, moving to one of the windows and drawing aside the curtain to take a peek outside. For a moment, all was dark, then a floodlight tripped on, followed moments later by a second. She could see Seesay and Browning, weapons drawn, moving toward the disturbance, but nothing living besides them.

“What have you brought here, Doctor?”

She was tempted to turn around and berate O on the Doctor’s behalf, but the Doctor’s reply, sounding half-scared herself, stilled her. “I don’t know.” She paused. “Let’s take a look outside.”

She moved to the door, O following immediately behind. Rose turned from the window, shooting a questioning look at Graham. “Looking outside was actually quite low on my list,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “But when does she ever listen to me?” 

The question was meant to be rhetorical, Rose figured, but she answered it anyway, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder as he came past her. “Welcome to life with the Doctor, mate. You get used to it.”

The four of them spread out on the porch, straining their eyes to look past the harsh floodlights and still coming up with nothing. The Doctor had her sonic out already, scanning broadly, looking for something--anything, Rose guessed. 

“Please, all of you, back inside,” Agent Seesay implored.

The Doctor, characteristically, ignored him, so the other three did as well. “No readings.” She sounded frustrated.

“You didn’t get any reading off that thing in the TARDIS either,” Graham pointed out. 

“Exactly. There’s _something_. It’s like I can sense them.” The frustration was definitely growing. 

O nodded, looking at Rose as if to confirm she felt it too. “I know what you mean.”

There was definitely something there, lurking in the shadows, on the edge of her vision. Almost as if she could see them out of the corner of her eye, if she could just figure out how to not-look at them properly. They were all in the same boat, it seemed. “They’re out there, hiding,” the Doctor said. “Tripping the sensors to let us know that they’re here. It’s like they’re watching us.”

“Like animals, stalking their prey,” O said softly. Rose shivered as the Doctor turned a look on him. “Sorry, that wasn’t helpful.”

Seesay had had enough, deciding to try reason. “From what I understand, we were sent here ‘cause you're one of the few people that can stop the attacks on our colleagues. So please, go inside, figure it out, and let us do the job we came for.”

“Doc, come on,” Graham urged.

The Doctor finally relented, turning back to the house. Rose lingered a moment longer, fixing Seesay with a serious look. “You two be careful, alright?”

He nodded with a smile, then turned to address his partner. “I'll take ‘round the back. Stay on comms.”

Rose was still worried, but followed the rest of them back inside, going to the window again. The Doctor, O, and Graham were back at the computers. She couldn’t see either agent from this vantage point anymore, but could keep an eye on the complex shadows and reflected light from the security lamps that had started to flicker on and off. The silhouette of Seesay reappeared, his weapon still trained ahead of him. 

It wasn’t his weapon that fired the first shot, nor the second. 

“Browning!” The Doctor shouted, running for the door, making it outside just behind Rose. 

Bright lights, even brighter than the security floodlights had been, stood in a crowd of vaguely humanoid shapes, around two unmoving ones on the ground. Rose clapped a hand over her mouth in horror and the Doctor skidded to a halt. “Get away from them!” The Doctor shouted. 

Rose was pretty sure there was no ‘them’ left to get away from. And suddenly, there were no beings of light there either, the desert night quiet.

Only for a moment though before they reappeared, popping back into existence in a blaze of light, closer than they had been before, standing in neat ranks. For a dizzying, horrifying moment it reminded Rose of the ghostly impressions the Cybermen had left on this universe as a precursor to their invasion. 

“We can’t fight them out here, Doctor,” O’s voice, full of reason, came from behind her. He sounded just as frightened, but he seemed to be handling himself well, a detached part of her noted. “Strategic retreat.”

Rose reached down and took the Doctor’s hand, finally pulling her eyes from the massed light-beings in front of them to glance at Rose’s pleading eyes. “Fine,” she bit out, giving in and letting Rose lead her back to the house, even as she watched the menacing figures the whole way.

As soon as the doors were shut the Doctor was back in motion, buzzing it with the sonic screwdriver for all of the good it did her. “No signals off any of them. They've just obliterated those bodies. What can they be?”

Rose swallowed nervously. “They couldn’t be-” The Doctor looked at her sharply. “When the Cybermen came through, the ghosts…”

This was a possibility the Doctor hadn’t considered, Rose could tell, but she shook her head after a thought. “The bodies were gone.”

That certainly hadn’t been something the Cybermen had been able to do. It wasn’t much of a reassurance, but it was something. The Doctor spun away from her, wielding her sonic screwdriver at each set of doors and windows. 

Alarms were going off on several of O’s machines as he hurried back to them. “Looks like they’re moving.”

“They’re surrounding the building, look,” Graham pointed out on the screen.

O worked away at the keyboard. “That’s what we want.”

“Do we?” The Doctor was as confused as Rose as they approached the desk.

“Yeah.” 

Rose glanced out the window, then back at the screen O had open in front of him. ‘Fence activated’, it read, while on another the army (she couldn’t help but think of it as that) approached the house, closing in in a ring. “Just a little closer.”

“Don’t you think it’s close enough?” Rose couldn’t keep the slight edge of fear out of her voice. Everything about this situation was setting her on edge.

“Ha!” O stabbed his fingers down on a button triumphantly, setting his plan into motion.

Rose watched through the window as something like a fence made of half-invisible hexagons lit up around the house, catching the figures in it, zapping them. A few seconds of this and they vanished the same way that they had appeared.

“Did you kill ‘em?” Graham asked.

The Doctor struck this idea down immediately. “More like they retreated.”

“How did you know that would work?” He was full of questions. Rose decided that she quite liked this one. 

“I didn’t. Gambled.” Rose was not encouraged by O’s answer.

“Some kit you’ve got here.” The Doctor sounded almost impressed, Rose noted, edging closer to the window.

He demurred. “I’ve had a few years to rig it out. Just in case.”

“Doctor,” Rose called from the window, peering around the frame to catch sight of one last glowing figure. “We’ve still got one outside.”

Slowly, inexorably, it approached the house, not bothering to go for a window or a door. Just straight at the wall. Rose backed away towards the others. 

It seemed O wasn’t out of tricks yet though. “Plan B. I've got a plan B.” He pointed to the desk. “It's in the blueprints, Doctor. Just under the folder. I rigged it in case anything got past the first line of defence.”

“Impressive.” Rose’s mild compliment was shaky, but sincere. He spared a second to shoot her a grateful smile. 

Where the creature had walked up to the wall, the bookcase and filing cabinet there began to distort, as if something was pressing through. “It’s coming through the wall!” Graham pointed out. “How can it do that?”

Rose thought about pointing out that if the Doctor knew that, then one of them wouldn’t have been able to push its way nearly into the TARDIS, but held her tongue.

“Well, physical boundaries don’t stop it, but it’s still not used to this planet, or maybe even this reality,” the Doctor reasoned. Rose looked sharply at her, but she wasn’t paying attention to Rose, staring intently at the creature as it came completely through the wall. The appearance of the bookshelf it had come through fell away completely, leaving nothing but light.

“Spring loaded?” The Doctor asked over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off of the creature.

O answered. “Yep.”

“What are you talking about?” Graham voiced the question Rose had figured out the answer to only seconds prior. 

As if in response, the Doctor leapt forward, aiming her sonic screwdriver at something in the ceiling. With a house-shaking slam, a glass and metal box dropped down over the creature, trapping it inside.

“Oh you could’ve warned me about that!” Graham exclaimed, startled.

The Doctor was ignoring him. “Re-route the charge. We’ve got to keep it in there,” she ordered O. “A bit quicker!”

“Yes! Doing my best!” 

“That thing can’t hold it!” Graham insisted.

O barely looked up from his work. “Is he just here for the running commentary?”

“Oi!” Rose jumped to Graham’s defense, but O hit another key and energy sprang out along the metal of the containment box, shocking the creature and focusing everyone’s attention back on it.

Energy was arcing around the box and into the figure when it placed its hand on the glass. It pulled back and, though the energy was still there, it was no longer arcing across. The creature didn’t attempt to breach the box again though.

“It worked!” O sounded giddy, if not a little shocked, as if he hadn’t been quite sure. “It actually… it actually worked.”

The Doctor had no time for him and his triumph however. She steeled herself for a breath, then walked straight up to the glass of the box, facing off against the creature contained therein. “Who are you?”

No answer. “What are you doing to the people on this planet?” Still none. “Why are you changing their DNA?” The creature merely tilted its head at her. “And why spies? Why are you only attacking spies? What are you, exactly, except for reluctant to talk?”

“I’m thinking one more blast,” O suggested.

Rose looked sharply at him. “What for?”

He was about to answer her when the Doctor continued her interrogation as if she hadn’t heard anything. “How many are you, in your race or species or whatever you are? Where are you from?”

It was this question that the creature broke its silence on, the deep voice as unsettling as the answer that it gave. “Far beyond.”

“So you can communicate then.” The Doctor nodded. “Beyond where?”

“Your understanding.” If Rose had been unnerved before, the sinister laugh the creature answered with increased it tenfold.

“I think it’s laughing at you, Doc,” Graham ventured. 

He earned both a glare from the Doctor and a smack to his arm from Rose. “Yes, I got that,” the Doctor shot back, annoyed with the whole situation, but her focus still on the creature. “Is this your native form, wherever it is you’re from? Is this what you look like at home?”

The Doctor was still trying to understand and empathize with this creature, Rose knew. But it didn’t seem to be doing any good. “We take this form to mock you. Your shape amuses us.”

“Very funny.” The Doctor did not sound amused at all.

It continued. “We are stable now. We are ready.”

Rose shivered again. The Doctor pushed on with her questioning. “What does that mean, stable? Ready for what?”

“To take this.” 

“To take this what?” The Doctor shot back. “Hut? Country? Planet?”

“Universe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The current plan is to update this weekly, and at least get through Spyfall. We'll see where things go from there.


	3. No One Else Here Will Save You: Spyfall Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite the threats of the light aliens, Team TARDIS actually gets a moment or two of quiet. Not much, but they'll take what they can get before everything pops off again.
> 
> Then, the Doctor and her friends get to be spies! Dressing up, parties, chases, betrayal--they're getting the whole package.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell, the theme song of Casino Royale (2006).
> 
> This chapter is a little... long. Couldn't find a better place to break it though, so here we are.

_“What does that mean, stable? Ready for what?”_

_“To take this.”_

_“To take this what?” The Doctor shot back. “Hut? Country? Planet?”_

_“Universe.”_

\--

Rose must have made some noise of distress without realizing it, the Doctor looking back at her. She hadn’t been able to talk with this Doctor in her head the way she had her husband, but she had never lost the skill of being able to look at him and know just what he was thinking. Something else that worked across regenerations, apparently. Right now the Doctor was scared, which only frightened Rose more.

The creature began moving again, drawing everyone’s attention as it started to squirm, like it was struggling. “Interesting. That glow’s increasing. Life getting more intense?”

It was an odd guess, Rose thought, but maybe the Doctor was grasping at straws.

“It’s fighting back,” O informed them from his position at the keyboard. 

“Or something going on.” The fear was buried again, deep under the curiosity the Doctor carried for this anomaly that had found her.

It kept struggling, lights and electricity beginning to spark around it. 

O kept working just as swiftly. “This isn’t good, Doctor. It’s trying to overload my systems.” He grunted in pain and pulled back as the sparks spread to his interface, singeing his fingers before he got away. “It’s like it’s taken a suicide pill.”

There was one more flash, brighter than all the rest as if it was going to explode, overwhelming her senses. O braced a hand on her shoulder as they all turned away…

And then it was quiet. 

There was no more searing light or sparks of electricity bouncing around, just a human woman, crouched down as if flinching away from something in fear.

“Yaz!” The Doctor rushed forward. “Turn the power off in there,” she directed O, not seeming to notice it was already gone.

“It’s already blown out,” he confirmed. 

“Yaz! How are you even here?”

Yaz seemed too shocked to answer, eyes darting from the Doctor to Rose to O to Graham and back again. The Doctor’s phone rang and she pulled it from her pocket, not taking her eyes off of Yaz. 

Rose could hear Ryan’s voice even where she was a few feet away. “Doctor, you’ve got to help! I’ve lost Yaz!”

“Yaz? I’ve got her,” she reassured Ryan, breathlessly. “We’re coming for you now.”

Getting the steel-and-glass trap up to let Yasmin out was a little more involved than deploying it had been. The winch did its work though and soon enough she was rushing to the Doctor for a brief, reassuring hug. Rose wasn’t entirely sure which of them needed it more. Or which got more good out of it.

“Come on,” the Doctor instructed, turning on her heel and marching out to the TARDIS at a swift clip. 

Yaz stuck close to the Doctor’s heels, Rose following behind. Graham and O, Rose noticed, stayed in the house, obviously assuming they’d be back shortly. The Doctor was already in motion, setting the TARDIS into flight even as Rose closed the door. Yaz leaned up against one of the crystal struts surrounding the console, still looking rather shell-shocked. Rose came up beside her. “Hey,” she said quietly. “You alright?”

It seemed Yaz still didn’t know what to make of her, this strange woman who had ended up in the TARDIS, who the Doctor seemed to know so well. “M’fine,” she brushed Rose off, looking away into the middle distance.

Clearly she wasn’t, but Rose didn’t want to push. She barely knew her, after all. Biting her lip, she considered the situation for a moment, then let it go. Yaz would deal with it in her own way.

They had landed anyway. Ryan burst in through the doors, sweeping his friend up into a hug. “Thank goodness you’re alright.” Yaz patted him on the shoulder briefly before he let go, looking at her intently. He didn’t get a chance to say anything about what he saw there before the TARDIS was thumping to a landing again. 

Yaz pulled away from Ryan, looking toward the doors where the hut O called home was, presumably, then seemed to reconsider, shaking her head. “I’m going to sleep,” she declared firmly, turning and heading further into the TARDIS without another word to anyone. 

Ryan looked after her, clearly concerned, but unsure what to do about it. The Doctor nodded briefly. “Probably the best idea. I’ll just let O know we’ll be staying in for the night, shall I?”

She went for the outer doors. Ryan glanced at Rose, a little awkwardly, then gave her a nod. “G’night then.”

Rose smiled, waving him off down the corridors deeper into the ship. The creak of the front door announced Graham’s arrival, the Doctor shutting the door behind them. Graham paused briefly to nod his own goodnight at Rose, almost as awkwardly as Ryan had, before going the same direction the younger man had. Though not, Rose noted, without a look at the Doctor laden with some meaning she couldn’t quite decipher.

The Doctor stood just inside the shut doors, considering Rose as she stood before the console of her TARDIS, bathed in golden light. It was the first quiet moment that they had had all day, the hum of the ship the only sound in the stillness.

Cautiously, the Doctor approached, a wariness in her eyes. As if she was afraid that Rose would vanish, or turn away, or turn out to not be real if she looked away, or breathed too hard. Rose would be lying if she said she wasn’t afraid of the same thing, just a little bit, of the world falling to darkness and flames under her feet.

The Doctor reached out, brushing one of Rose’s gold tresses back from her face, and Rose leaned into her touch. A universe away from everything she had known--again--and the touch of the Doctor’s hand on her was like coming home. Again. Still. “Doctor,” she whispered.

“Still the Doctor then?” Her voice was almost sad, repeating the old line.

Rose’s gaze pinned her to the spot with its intensity. “Always.”

A breathless moment passed between the two of them, suspended as if in amber. Rose wanted to kiss her, wanted to leave, wanted to go back to a universe where the Doctor had a face she knew instead of this one that was so deeply familiar at the very same time that it was alien and new. 

The Doctor’s lips were soft upon hers, as sweet as honey, as dizzying as time.

Then, without warning, she was pulling away, Rose’s lips following a moment after, still drawn to her. The Doctor was back at the console, manipulating controls in a fashion Rose recognized even in this new body as the Doctor looking busy just to look like she was doing something. She found her voice on the second try, though it was still soft, a little lost-sounding. “Doctor?”

“They said ‘beyond’ the universe, those creatures. So maybe there’s a way to get you back.” The Doctor wasn’t looking at her, focused on the console, on all of those controls. 

Rose shook her head in bewilderment, pulling her fingers from her lips. “Back _where_?”

“Your universe, of course.” She said it so matter-of-factly that Rose could almost believe it wasn’t killing her to even start to try to think of it. To lose Rose. Again.

“S’not my universe,” Rose denied hotly. “And there’s-” She took a deep, steadying breath, approaching the console and laying her hands flat on it. “There’s nothing left for me there.”

The Doctor’s head shot up as she looked at her over the console that she had retreated to the other side of. Already trying to distance herself physically. “What’ve you done with me then, hm? The other me,” She clarified, waving a hand.

Rose looked down at the console under her fingers, trying to will the tears to stay back. “He’s gone,” she answered shortly.

“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’?” 

She would almost call the Doctor’s tone harsh if she didn’t know better. And she very much knew better. “For a while now. He died.” She hated to put it so bluntly, but there was nothing for it. The Doctor seemed taken aback, then like she was going to launch into an admonishment. Rose cut her off before she could get started. “Old age’ll do that to someone mostly human.”

The Doctor deflated a bit, staring uncomprehendingly at Rose, who found she could no longer keep the tears at bay. It had been so _hard_ , watching him grow old and wither up, while she stayed so much the same. It had come to a point where he looked old enough to be her father, then her grandfather, when all the while she had had a 23 year head start on him. “He’s not there for me to go back to.”

She dashed the tears away with the back of her left hand, the lack of a ring on it still feeling strange after all these years. Maybe someday it wouldn’t, but until then… “You’re the only Doctor in the universes now, far as I know”

The Doctor came around the console slowly. She hesitated for a moment, then placed her hands on Rose’s face again, cupping it gently. “How?” She breathed, a single word encompassing so very much.

Rose opened her eyes and the Doctor wiped away another tear that slid down her face with her thumb. Rose’s smile was mirthless, the great cosmic joke that she had made for herself no longer funny. “Bad Wolf.”

It was so strange, she thought. She would have sworn she had seen the Doctor make that very same face once before, full of terror and wonder and love so pure it burned more than any encounter with the rest of time and space could, even as it was running through her. 

The Doctor’s brilliant smile was unexpected, even as she spun away to the console again, hands at new controls. “I never thought! But surely it would’ve... “ She flipped a series of dials downwards. “I wonder if--”

It was too much for Rose. Between everything she had known the Doctor to be, between everything she remembered him as, and this new kaleidoscopic version she was left reeling a little bit. It had been a hell of a day. She staggered backward, just a step, catching herself on the console.

The Doctor froze, staring at her. “Rose?”

She grounded herself on the background thrum of the TARDIS, just underneath her heartbeat, steady as breathing, even when her own breath was unsure. She followed the ship’s lead, steadying her breaths to its rhythm.

“Do I--” Rose began, faltering, then rallied. “I should sleep. Where--You haven’t got a seat in here anymore.” She gestured vaguely about the console room. She had slept on the old jumpseat more than once, in the old days.

Another heartbeat passed before the Doctor moved, abandoning the half-formed experiments her flying fingers had been imagining into the console. She was all courtesy now, nothing more than the pressure of a hand on the crook of Rose’s arm. “The TARDIS wouldn’t let you down,” the Doctor assured, half to herself. “Let’s find your room.”

\--

Rose knew that this hadn’t been her room. Of course, she hardly expected her room with all its old makeup and such would still be there after however many years it had been. The new door had been marked with an inlay of a rose in gold tones though, so she felt safe in assuming it was meant for her. This certainly wasn’t a room the TARDIS had conjured out of nowhere. Not with its plush blankets and deep pillows.

Not with its selection of comfy, yet tasteful, knits and trousers in the closet, more in line with her style now than what she had worn when she lived here. It wasn’t the sort of thing this Doctor wore, after all. Even if Rose did spot some rainbow tees and cropped trousers just a few options over. The oversized, patterned blue jumper she picked out was comfortable. Jeans, some simple black flats and hair skimmed back into a ponytail and Rose figured she was at least presentable enough for the galley. 

Of all the things, Rose’s favorite mug from her early travels with the Doctor was still there, cheerful red with little hearts everywhere. It even still had the chip in the rim from when she had dropped it in an unexpected landing once. After her first few sips of tea she was considering going to find the Doctor just as the alien in question breezed into the room.

“There you are! Thought you were gonna sleep all day!”

Rose snorted. “No such thing as day on the TARDIS,” she reminded her. 

The Doctor grinned, but shook her head. “‘Course there is, while we’re parked, anyway.”

“Oh there’s a change.” Rose couldn’t help grinning back at her.

“New me,” the Doctor chirped, spreading her arms in a ‘look at me’ sort of gesture. “Lots of change. Still getting used to some of them, if I’m honest. Like cheese!”

Rose blinked, then decided it wasn’t just lack of tea that was throwing her for a loop. “Cheese?”

The Doctor was rummaging in the fridge. (He had explained, once, that it wasn’t really a ‘refrigerator’ and had thrown around all sorts of multisyllabic words like ‘quantum stasis fields’ and ‘optimal freshness momentum arrester’ for a good ten minutes to explain his apparently magnificent machine. Rose had blinked, nodded, and told him to put the milk back in the fridge now please.) 

“Love cheese. And sweets, again. Can’t get enough of ‘em.” While explaining, the Doctor had pulled out and rejected half a roasted chicken on a tray, a 34th century sports drink, and a jar with one lonely gherkin floating in it. “Ah-ha!” Clutched triumphantly in her hand was a lemon.

“Do you… need the lemon for something?” Rose asked slowly. She had seen weirder experiments before, it was true.

The Doctor had to stand on her tiptoes to reach a pitcher that had probably been much easier to get at when she had been taller. “Tea,” she explained, finally bringing it down with a thump.

“Uh-huh.”

It was so easy for her to fall right back into this, Rose mused as the Doctor started detailing the thought process that had brought her to the galley for refreshments. Research, apparently, was what the Doctor had been doing while the humans had been sleeping. “Sorry, did you say seven percent non-human?” She asked, not having heard that part earlier. 

“Yeah. Weird, that.” The Doctor paused in her movements, shooting a brief look at Rose from under her lashes. 

It was curiosity, Rose knew, the desire to find out all of the things that had the Doctor looking like that. She had tolerated the poking and prodding and investigation when it was her husband, but the Doctor--this Doctor--wasn’t that. Rose Tyler loved the Doctor, that was a fact of the universes as much as gravity or light. She just didn’t know what that meant, here and now. Not yet, anyway. 

Which wasn’t even to _begin_ to touch on the kiss, brief though it had been.

Rose sipped her tea again before a thought struck her, and she turned the unspoken question back on the Doctor. "Which face are you on now? Which regeneration?”

The Doctor looked away, ostensibly focusing on whatever she was concocting, yes, but also to give herself more time to form the answer. “Since I… last saw you, I’ve had two other faces.”

Doing some quick calculations in her head, Rose was coming up with a number that didn’t make sense, not with what her husband had told her and everything. “How?”

Judging by what she knew of the Doctor’s history, of all that he, now she, had been through, she should have been out of regenerations before ending up with this face. Her mind started to race, spinning scenarios out of control, but the Doctor shook her head, sighing. "A gift. From a friend." She turned to look at Rose again, her face serious. "He wouldn't have told you, he didn't know--we changed our own timeline, after you… were gone. We saved Gallifrey."

Rose stared at her dumbly, her heart in her throat, hope, joy, wonder--and deep sorrow too. Her late husband had never known, had carried that guilt with him alongside all of the other thoughts and feelings from the original Doctor. "You what?"

She shrugged, as if it was no big deal. "Crossed my own timeline and all. But they're back now, sort of. Not really. Enough to give out some extra regeneration energy when a friend convinced them to, anyway."

There was far more to this story than what the Doctor had so blithely summed up, but Rose was too stunned to pry further.

Besides which, the Doctor was back in motion focused on making her ‘tea’, though Rose noticed a distinct lack of boiled water. Or tea leaves. “Anyway, everyone else is up and at ‘em, let me finish this and we’ll go figure things out.”

It was the confidence that she said it with, Rose figured. Like the universe wouldn’t dare contradict her. It really wasn’t just the accent that reminded her of the first version of the Doctor she had met, so long ago.

Rose finished her own tea right as the Doctor was cracking ice cubes into the pitcher that was now full of a dark liquid. The Doctor dipped her pinky into it, popping it into her mouth to try it. “Yeah, that’s something like tea!”

 _That_ , on the other hand, was not encouraging. “If you say so.”

“Come on!” Constantly in motion, this Doctor was, already starting out toward the console room and the outback hut beyond. 

\--

So far the only one of the Doctor’s new little friends that had sat down to chat with ‘O’ was the old one. It was a bit of an aggravation, that the one most interested in talking with him was the running commentary one. What he _really_ wanted to do was talk to that Yaz girl, see what she had found out, worm his way deeper into her trust, maybe get her to confide in him a little. It would make it all the more delightful when he pulled it all down around the Doctor’s ears. 

And then of course there was ‘the’ Rose Tyler. The last he had heard, she was trapped in another universe with some bastardized version of the Doctor, and now here she was. The possibilities made him practically giddy. He could tell dear little Yaz (who was half in love with the Doctor herself) was already suspicious of her. That was going to be fun to play with.

He was sure that he could get even Graham, who seemed to take things a little more placidly than the other two, curious about the Doctor, plant doubts in his mind about her. “How long have you known the Doctor, Graham?”

“Oh, that's a tricky one to answer, that. You see, things never really happen in a straight line with the Doc.” He hated when the companions got ‘clever’ with him. “How much do you know about her?”

“A bit. Our paths crossed very briefly once, when she was a man,” he lied smoothly. He had met the Doctor far more times than that, of course, but the only time the Doctor had met O was in that old, cross, Scottish body of his. Ah, that had been fun, he recalled. 

Graham seemed surprised by this tidbit of information. “When she was a what?”

 _Plus ça change,_ he thought. “Has she never mentioned that?”

“I thought she was joking.”

Yes, he did seem the sort to let it go as a joke and not pry any further. How the hell had this one ended up with her? “You asked Rose about her? I know _she’s_ known the Doctor a long time.”

Graham was looking a little uncomfortable now. “We barely got a chance to talk to her and all, what with, everything.”

That was true enough, he supposed. “How about the Doctor? You have any idea where she’s from?”

Still more discomfort as Graham thought about it more closely. “Well, her, we’ve tried to ask but she just changes the subject, you know.”

Planting the seeds of doubt in their minds was always such delicious fun. “I've got a whole shelf over there all about the Doctor. Everything I could gather. About some of her friends,” he paused meaningfully on the word, “as well. A lot of inconsistencies, but it's very, very interesting. Do you want to have a look?”

Graham so very much did, he could tell. But then, of course, the Doctor being the Doctor, she had to choose that moment to pop out of her TARDIS. Still, seeds planted. If he didn’t manage to kill them all off in the next few days, those would generate some great fun, he hoped.

“Come on, you two,” the Doctor said brightly as Rose Tyler stepped out behind her. “Everyone out front. Lots to catch up on. I made iced tea. Possibly.” She sniffed at the pitcher, shrugged, and smiled at the little laugh her friend gave her. 

_Sickening. But oh what fun it will be._ That was the thought keeping him going with this charade: just how good it was going to be when it all ended.

The Doctor had taken one of the laptops from his set-up out onto the verandah. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but that’s where the other two humans had been hanging out. She plopped a device onto the machine and started explaining. “Daniel Barton's DNA registers as 93 percent human.”

Graham frowned. “Which makes him, what, alien?”

Rose shifted uncomfortably where she sat on the other side of the Doctor, watching whatever it was she was doing. “Not...necessarily.” 

Well, wasn’t that _interesting_. But he shook his head. Had to help Barton keep the cover--for now--even as the Master set up his eventual betrayal. “No, it can't be. I've been through Barton's records. There are thousands of photos of him online at all ages. If he's not human, that's one very impressive legend he's put together.” He should know, having done that himself once.

Perhaps Yasmin remembered something about that. “Not impossible, though,” she pointed out.

“All right, MI6,” Graham addressed O. “Help me with something, cos I can't get me nut round it. C told us that Barton's company is more powerful than most countries. That can't be true.”

He was so quick to dismiss things that couldn’t be, wasn’t he? He explained. “Governments these days are full of people who don't understand technology, so countries rely on outsourcing their tech requirements and expertise to private companies that transcend national boundaries. Companies like VOR.” Detailing just how many tendrils VOR had crept its fingers into, so many beautiful things like military systems, biodata, all of it. So many wonderful tools of destruction.

Rose seemed disconcerted, fingering something in her jacket pocket. He was willing to bet it was her cell phone. He wondered which world it had come from.

Ryan piped up. “So do we think Barton's behind the assassination of C? And the attacking of us in the car? And is in league with these aliens?”

It was a jump, but not a far one. Certainly one the Master wanted to encourage though.

The Doctor turned to Yasmine, frowning. “What did he say to those creatures in his office?”

Damn, they had met the Kasaavin and had come out unscathed. Clearly if you wanted a thing done right…

“That they should have been discreet.”

“So it was like he was in control of them?” The Doctor posited.

“I couldn't work out who's in charge of who.” Yasmin and Ryan both shrugged.

The laptop the Doctor had been working on bleeped, calling her attention again. She yammered on about checking Barton’s databases, for anything alien and had, apparently, gotten a hit. “Ah, found something.” More blather about languages and translations.

The laptop bleeped again at her, and the Master relaxed marginally. 

“No translation?” Rose asked, tone curious.

The Doctor frowned at the laptop. “That can't be right. I've checked it against every known language in the universe and there's no match. Ah, wait!” She resumed typing furiously. “I keep the Tardis systems open for new languages, even on the fringes of the known universe. If I can synch that. Bingo!”

O gave Yaz a look of the sort a human oh-so-impressed by the Doctor might give another just as impressed. 

“Right,” she said, jumping up. “Need a dark wall. Come on.” She hurried inside with the laptop. O watched Rose roll her eyes fondly and pick up the Doctor’s abandoned glass to bring it inside with them. 

The Doctor had pulled out a projector from somewhere in the drifts of human technology he had lying around and soon had an image projected on the wall. Even the Master hadn’t seen this. He couldn’t say he wasn’t interested in what she would make of it. 

“What is that?” Ryan asked.

The Doctor peered at it, adjusting the focus of the projector. “I'm not sure. A single image encrypted in alien code. Trying to decode.” She went back to clacking away at the laptop.

“One image, though. Steganography,” Yaz offered. “Like what he sent you. A picture of a fish.” O nodded at her, smiling. For a human, she wasn’t half slow.

Graham wasn’t getting it yet. “I can't see a pattern at all, Doc.”

“Decoding takes a moment.” She was impatient too though, buzzing the laptop with her sonic as Rose smothered her own grin behind a hand. 

The image resolved into a series of white dots across the wall. “What's that?” Ryan asked. “Join the dots?”

“A constellation?” Rose suggested.

The Doctor squinted at the picture. “I think it's coordinates.”

Yaa also squinted at the image. “Coordinates for what?”

Wielding the sonic at the laptop a second time produced a series of lines etching out a map, making the Doctor’s remark about coordinates far more clear. “Locations for those creatures?” Rose suggested.

“All across planet Earth,” the Doctor agreed. Having resolved into a map of the world, more dots began to appear in the light web. 

“More than just a few.” Rose’s voice shook ever so slightly, the Master noticed.

“There's hundreds of 'em.” Yaz sounded like she was in much the same boat.

“We can't deal with all those.” Graham was surprisingly calm with this assessment of doom. Perhaps he really _was_ just here for the running commentary.

To the Master’s surprise, it was Ryan who came up with the most pertinent question. “What are they doing here anyway?”

The Doctor watched more and more dots appear for a moment, before coming to a realization. “It's all in the patterns. Steganography, encrypted code, attacks on intelligence agents.”

“All spy stuff,” Rose agreed, the realization in her voice as well. 

The Doctor shot her a half smile. “They're alien spies embedded here on Earth!”

They were, of course, but O shook his head. “No, no, that's not possible.”

“Spies from where?” Ryan asked.

“I don't know,” the Doctor admitted. “I don't recognise them. I don't recognise the language, or why they're attacking people. Or what happened to you, Yaz.” She looked at Rose. “Have you? Seen anything like this?”

Rose shook her head, frowning in thought. “Nothing, excepting… you know.”

Graham called their attention back to the screen. “The image is still changing, Doc.”

“More layers still being decrypted.” She turned back to the wall as the image stretched and changed, the world map duplicating until it was repeated over the wall ten times. “Oh. Why's it doing that? I don't understand. Multiple Earths? What does that even mean?”

All of the humans were looking freaked out now, including Rose. “It couldn’t be anything to do with, well, with _me_ , could it?” In fact, she looked scared of more than what the map was indicating. 

The Doctor’s frown deepened, the worry briefly overriding excitement and intrigue. “That’s not possible,” she rejected the notion firmly. 

It looked like Rose was going to continue on this topic that he knew would only lead them further astray, so O interjected. “Okay, okay. If you really think they're spies, we should be asking who's the spymaster?” He loved giving the blatant hint like that, dropping it into the conversation, and none of them would see it coming until it was too late. “Who's running the alien spies? Because that's the person who holds the answers.”

“Well, it’s got to be Daniel Barton, right?” Graham answered.

“C said they thought Barton was a double or triple agent,” Yaz ageed.

“We need to pay Barton a visit,” the Doctor determined.

Ryan was just the tiniest bit smug. “Good thing he's having a party, then. We got invites.”

“Yes!” The Doctor cheered. “Nice work, you two.”

“Got invites for us all, have you?” Graham voiced the obvious question.

“Nah, don’t worry ‘bout that.” Rose was grinning again, already recovering. “The Doctor’s aces at hacking guest lists.”

The Doctor looked pleased at Rose’s mild praise. “What do you reckon, O?” She smiled at him, the excitement coming back in spades. “Fancy a trip in the box?”

O grinned, beaming out excitement, interest, and just that little hint of fear and awe he had seen on so many of their faces. After all, it would be interesting to see what she had done with the place this time.

The Doctor opened the door, waving him inside. _Escorting the snake into her garden_ , he smiled harder at the thought, feigning wonder and surprise. “Shut up.” He turned back to the open door, to the others watching him. “Ridiculous.”

Rose had come up to her, taken her hand, and the Doctor was grinning at her like there was some stupid little private joke between them. “Somewhere in the lower substrata, there's a wardrobe hall,” the Doctor told them all. “I think it's the first right after the karaoke buses.”

“Ah, is _that_ where she’s put it?” Rose smiled.

Graham, always the last to catch up, it seemed to O, asked, “Why do we need a wardrobe for?”

\--

They filed into the TARDIS, skirting around the console area to the back. All except for the Doctor, who drifted over to the console. 

"Aren't you coming?" Yaz asked her.

The Doctor looked down at her own outfit briefly, then shrugged. "The TARDIS'll sort something for me. She's good like that. Now go on! Pick out anything you like."

Rose was already going, as eager as ever to get to dress up. The Doctor’s directions had been slightly off, of course, but the TARDIS helped Rose out as usual. Though in a different part of the ship now, the layout was still familiar to her. “You go up those stairs, should take you to the tuxedos,” she told the boys as they followed, O gaping openly at the ship. Rose smiled at Yaz. “And I’m sure you and I can find something to suit us.” 

Yaz’s quirk of the lips in response to Rose’s sunny smile was more coolly polite than anything, but Rose wasn’t about to back down from trying to befriend her. The Doctor clearly liked her, so Rose was determined. But for the moment she would focus on dressing up for the party. 

Her old closet was a universe away again, true, but at least she had the whole wide range of the TARDIS wardrobe to choose from here. She hadn’t dressed up for a party like this for a very long time. At one point it had actually been fairly normal for her to have to get dolled up to go to a Vitex gala or a charity fundraiser or something similar. Having the Doctor at her side had made them at least tolerable. All of that had been such a long time ago though. 

As Rose was contemplating a blouse with an astoundingly large bow on the front, a black velvet robe-like dress, and a few other options, Yaz struck up the conversation again. _Encouraging_ , Rose thought. “So how do you know the Doctor then?”

Rose ran her fingers over the subtle jet beading of another dress as she considered how to answer that. “It’s a long story,” she finally settled on.

“We’re in a time machine,” she countered, shooting Rose an unimpressed look from where she was looking at some jewelry laid out on a tray.

Rose considered pointing out that it wasn’t like they could use the TARDIS to fast-forward through conversations, but felt that might come off as facetious. “I used to travel with her. Well, him. Long time ago now.”

“Yeah?” Yaz’s curiosity was piqued.

It was with a pang of sadness that Rose thought of her first meeting with one of the Doctor’s former travelling companions. She did so miss Sarah Jane. “All around the universe, the Doctor and I. Saw the end of the world, saved the universe a few times, all that stuff.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Yaz was holding a sequined jacket up to herself in a mirror, so didn’t see the way Rose stilled, staring at the racks of clothes around her without really seeing them. “That’s where the long story part comes in,” she said softly.

Shaking herself out of it, Rose grabbed a few options she liked, retreating behind a changing screen. At least back there she could hide from Yaz’s questioning gaze. “Suffice it to say,” she continued, skimming out of her jeans. “It wasn’t totally by choice, on either of our parts.” She could only guess how true that was on the Doctor’s part, but she was sure he had thought he was doing what had to be done.

She knew Yaz must still be terribly curious about her, but seemed to sense that Rose didn’t want to elaborate yet. As much as Rose wanted to befriend her, she would rather not start off with talk of one of the worst days of her life. “Up until just a little while ago, I was living in an alternate universe. Got thrown back into this one, decided to find the Doctor again.” It was surprisingly simple to sum up those months of waiting and searching and hoping.

The boys were coming back down the stairs, and Rose had finally decided on a look. Everything was all spies and very James Bond, so she decided to lean into it. 

“We don’t clean up half bad now then do we, eh Ryan?” Graham teased the younger men.

Ryan fidgeted with the bowtie. “Still don’t know why you know how to tie one of these though.”

O caught sight of Rose first as she emerged from behind the screen, slipping her low-heeled shoes on. If the look on his face was anything to go by, this outfit definitely worked. She couldn’t wait to see the Doctor’s reaction to it.

Yaz emerged a moment later, looking very smart in the sequined jack and a necklace shaped like a bowtie. It was a very different vibe than Rose’s outfit, but it worked brilliantly on her. O thought so too, apparently, looking just as appreciative as he had for Rose.

“Well then,” Graham clapped his hands together. “Shall we?” Courteously, he offered his arm to Rose, like an old-fashioned gentleman.

She laughed, lightly placing her hand on it and letting him lead her back out to the console room. The Doctor, as Rose thought would be the case, was practically bouncing off the hex-covered walls by now.

“Finally!” The Doctor spun around as they entered. Anything else she was about to say was lost as she got a look at Rose, drinking her in eagerly.

While Yaz had leaned into the tuxedo theme with her black jacket and thematic jewelry, Rose had found a dress that had the structure of half a tuxedo, her other shoulder left bare for her golden hair to cascade down in curls. The front of the dress had a long slit up the leg, revealing both flashes of skin and the cute little heels with big black bowties on the toes. 

“You look beautiful,” the Doctor breathed, then seemed to catch herself, clearing her throat. “You all, uh, did well. Top form. Looking good, fam.”

Not that the Doctor had any room to judge anyone else’s fashion sense, Rose thought. She had made an effort, though. Or, more probably, the TARDIS made it for her. “Not half bad yourself,” Yaz replied, giving the Doctor a once over in return.

Rose left Graham’s arm and came up alongside the Doctor. “You might,” she teased quietly, “Want to pick your jaw up off the floor.”

The Doctor huffed back at her and took off for the doors, and Rose just laughed and followed. They had landed while they were changing, it seemed, as she opened the doors on bright California sunlight. The space between rows of grapevines was perfect for the TARDIS, and the smells of sun-baked earth and the wood of the vines rose up around them.

They weren’t far from the estate, and from what Rose could see it was an extremely nice one. Security was out front and, even though the garages appeared to be around back, there were three gleaming motorcycles standing by. “Blimey, doesn’t half like showing off,” Rose muttered under her breath. Rich people, it seemed, could be very similar across universes. She had picked up a few things in her second go at life as the heiress to a fortune with an eccentric genius at her side, after all.

The Doctor was beaming as the group approached the pedestal where the woman checking the guest list stood. “Doctor. _The_ Doctor.”

As Rose had expected, they were ushered inside, past the security that Rose eyed without seeming too obvious about it.

“Is this a bad time to mention I’ve never really done undercover work?” O said quietly as they entered the cool of the foyer. 

Graham turned on him. “You said you worked for MI6!”

“As an _analyst_ , in the office.” O was nervous.

The Doctor was already scanning the floor, looking for her target. “It’s a party. We’re guests. Blend in. And keep an eye out for Daniel Barton,” she reminded him.

Rose gave O an encouraging smile. “You’ll do fine!” She assured him.

His answering smile was less certain, but she thought he did buck up a little.

The main floor of the estate had various casino games spread out across it, a few stations at the sides where people were picking up bundles of chips. They didn’t seem to be trading anything for them, Rose noticed, so either there was no real money involved, or it was all handled electronically. The latter, she would bet, beginning to get a sense of this Barton character. 

The group swiftly split up, since all six of them wandering around in a clump would have not only seemed odd, it wouldn’t have covered very much ground. Graham pointed out the roulette table to Ryan and they headed that way, while Yaz pulled O off in another direction.

The Doctor headed straight for the blackjack table and was already waiting to be dealt in when Rose came up at her side. She slid a stack of betting chips she had picked up onto the felt of the table, grinning back at the Doctor. “Think you might need these.”

Not that the Doctor was playing blackjack though, Rose soon realized, as the Doctor began asking for cards, one after another. Far more than would have busted. With a cry, she slapped two of them down onto the table. “Snap!”

Neither Rose nor anyone else at the table could hold in their laughter at this. The Doctor looked at Rose, blinking in confusion. “Is that not the game?”

“No, d--” Rose swallowed the endearment that sprang to her lips, “Doctor, that’s not the game.” Sliding another stack of chips forward, she bumped the Doctor’s hips lightly with her own to make her budge over, which she willingly did. It also meant Rose had a moment where her hair hid her face, so she could school her emotions back into line. They were on a _mission_ , after all.

Rose was no card shark, but she did at least understand the basic rules of the game. She had played two hands when the Doctor suddenly nudged her. “Hm?” She asked, trying to decide whether to ask for another card or no.

“You should get one more,” the Doctor whispered to her. “Then the running count will be enough in your favor--”

Rose startled, staring at the Doctor as she realized what she was doing. “I fold!” She announced loudly to the table, slapping down the cards in her hand.

The dealer looked… relieved, most probably. Rose left the chips and pushed away from the table, towing the Doctor behind her. 

The Doctor looked confused. “But you could’ve won that round!”

“Doctor,” Rose patiently explained. “People tend not to like it when you count cards.”

“Do they?” The confusion was not abating.

Rose just shook her head, smiling in amusement. So many things changed, and yet the Doctor was still, somehow, so much the Doctor. “Let’s just. Get a drink. Some nibbles.”

The Doctor’s face lit up in anticipation. “Ooh, right you are Rose Tyler, nibbles!”

They made a slow circuit of the room, Rose ending up with a flute of champagne (and it was the good stuff, she could tell), the Doctor with a plate of hors d'oeuvres, content to scan the crowd for now. Wordlessly, the Doctor offered Rose a smoked salmon puff, and she accepted with a smile.

“You know,” Rose commented idly. “You remind me of him--well, of you. How you were.”

The Doctor looked at her, curious. “How d’you mean?”

“When I first met you. All leather and big ears and ‘lots of planets have a north’.” She briefly mimicked the Doctor’s current and one-time accent, causing the Doctor to shake her head and laugh. Rose had never been good at accents, after all.

Rose was about to say more when her attention was caught by one Daniel Barton walking through the room. She was sure she'd recognize him even without having seen a picture. He certainly _acted_ like he owned the place. The Doctor followed her gaze, clocking Barton as he nodded a smile at Yaz before going out to the veranda.

The Doctor's fingers were immediately entwined with Rose's as she pulled her out to follow, abandoning her plate of food. "Time for a chat," she muttered as an aside to Yaz as they passed.

The Doctor dropped Rose's hand as she approached the solitary figure overlooking the vineyard, extending a hand to him in greeting instead. "Nice party. Nice house."

As far as opening lines went, it wasn't the worst Rose had ever heard from the Doctor.

"Daniel," Barton replied warily, accepting the Doctor's firm handshake despite that. "Don't think we've been introduced."

"I'm the Doctor. I'm a plus one. This is Rose, she's _my_ plus one." Rose gave a little wave and the Doctor ploughed on ahead. "So, did you assassinate the head of MI6 yourself, or just order it?"

Barton looked nonplussed. "I think you're at the wrong party. Casino theme, not whodunnit."

The Doctor didn't relent. "Why is there an alien code embedded at the edge of your company's systems? We both know you're in league with a race of alien creatures."

Barton looked at Rose, addressing her instead of the madwoman in front of him. “You’d better take your girlfriend here in for some psychiatric help.” Rose’s lip curled up in a sneer at this. Seeing no help from her, he turned his attention back to the Doctor. “I have no idea who you are or what you’re talking about.”

"How long have they been here? Where are they from? Who recruited whom? Are you running them, or are they running you? Why is your DNA seven percent non-human?"

Nothing doing, apparently. "You're properly unhinged."

"No. I'm onto you, and I'm going to stop you," the Doctor declared. Rose nodded firmly, standing behind the Doctor both figuratively and literally.

Barton leaned in closer than Rose felt he really needed to, not seeming to get that the Doctor had been threatened by things even Barton, in his alien dealings, wouldn't be able to even begin to imagine. "I'm going to walk away now and you're going to stay away from me for the rest of both our lives, either voluntarily or because of my security people. Understand?"

Rose gave a short, dismissive laugh. "We're really hard to get rid of, Mister Barton."

He looked between the two of them, sneering. "Are you?"

Rose didn't like the implicit threat one bit. Not that threats worked any better on her than they did on the Doctor.

Barton stalked away back toward the house. Rose huffed out a breath. "Well that might have gone better." 

As soon as he had disappeared, the Doctor took her hand to pull her in that direction too. "Hopefully our friends have got an eye on him."

It turned out, however, that the distractions of the party had done their work on the others. "None of you saw him come back in?" The Doctor asked incredulously as they all gathered in the front hall. "He must be here somewhere."

Yaz was the one to spot him, outside the front portico, stepping into a blue Bentley. "There he is."

"Oh, no, you don't!"

They ran after him as a group, the Doctor in the lead, but the car was pulling away by the time they got outside themselves.

"He's off!" Graham sounded as disappointed as the rest of them felt.

"I mean," Ryan questioned, "Who leaves their own birthday party? He's definitely guilty. So what do we do now?"

Rose followed the Doctor's line of sight to the shiny motorcycles standing in their neat row that she had noticed on the way in. 

"Remember our trip to the Great Kalisperon Bike-Off?" The Doctor asked the other three, grinning, already moving for the bikes.

There wasn't much discussion as they all grabbed helmets and piled onto the three bikes. The only minor spot of difficulty Rose had was situating her skirt in such a way that it wouldn't get caught up in the wheel, but she was soon seated securely behind the Doctor on her bike, holding tight to her waist as she took off after the car. Rose let out a whoop of excitement, and could feel the vibration of the Doctor's laugh, though the wind whipped away the sound.

She wasn't laughing for long though. Rose saw Barton emerging from the window of his car and the silver flash of a weapon. As the sharp pops of gunshots rang out, she ducked herself as small as possible behind the Doctor. Getting shot might not kill her, but it would certainly not be fun.

The car veered off from out in front of them, but there were still shots being fired. Rose held gamely on, feeling the Doctor flinch out of the way, slowing just a bit. This allowed the car to speed up as it reached the end of the vineyard, passing by the three motorcycles. _Must be out of ammo_ , Rose thought as the shooting stopped. Indeed, Barton had vanished back inside the vehicle. It was still in sight, and they were still following--Rose noted the other two bikes with their friends aboard alongside them--Barton wasn't about to get rid of them that easily.

Rose took a closer look at the others, letting the Doctor focus on driving. Yaz looked exhilarated, while behind her O seemed halfway between that emotion and fear. Rose pulled one hand from the Doctor's waist to flash a thumbs-up and a questioning look at him. His answering smile was shaky, but he did offer a small, brief return of the gesture.

Graham and Ryan were in a similar boat, though Ryan didn't even free a hand to answer her, merely nodding. She supposed that was as much as she could ask for.

The drive was a short one, and they never really lost sight of the car. Soon enough it was pulling up to an airfield and a hangar that Rose spotted VOR branding on. Private planes, then. Definitely a showoff. 

All three bikes pulled up in front of the hangar doors that had closed behind the car, and six people hopped off to pull off helmets and put themselves back into some semblance of order.

"What now?" Yaz asked, eyeing the doors.

Rose had never met a closed door that had stood between the Doctor and her goal for long. A buzz of the sonic screwdriver was all it took before they were in. The hangar was full of small planes, all branded with the same logo as the hangar. "How many planes does one guy need?" Ryan remarked softly.

The Doctor had spotted their target though, boarding a plane that was quite a bit bigger than most of the ones surrounding them. "There he is."

"That's one big plane," Ryan pointed out the obvious.

"Where's he going in that?" Yaz asked.

"I don't know, but we can't let him get away," the Doctor said firmly.

Rose smiled at her brightly. "Only one way to find out." She was already pulling a hair tie from her pocket (because the TARDIS knew better than to not give Rose pockets, even in a nice dress) and putting her hair up in a quick and messy bun. Wouldn't do to have it getting in her face while she was trying to sprint in heels.

Graham blinked in confusion. "How? It's not as if we're gonna just jump on a plane with him, is it?" He caught the looks of the others around him, the Doctor already creeping out to start her run to the plane. "Oh, come on."

Barton's people working the hangar hadn't spotted them as they set off toward the already-moving plane, though that situation wasn't likely to last. The Doctor was first to reach the plane, using the sonic to open the back ramp before pulling herself up. "She's in! Fix alert sensors." Another buzz of the sonic and the flashing light inside went dark.

Yaz reached the ramp next, the Doctor pulling her in. "I've got you."

A shout came from the hangar behind them. "Hey, where are you going?"

Rose ignored it, speeding up. She was going to pay for this later, running in heels like this, but as long as she got on the plane she didn't much care. Graham and Ryan clambered aboard seconds before Rose reached the ramp. The Doctor's hands were strong around her wrists as she helped her aboard and Rose collapsed down into a panting heap. "Not bad for a 200 year old in heels," she joked, half to herself.

Just O left to go, now. He seemed to be struggling to keep up.

"Come on, son!" Graham shouted encouragement.

"I need to close the door!" The Doctor warned him.

With one last burst of effort, O's fingers caught the edge of the ramp and they collectively hauled him in. The rest of them lay in a heap for another moment as the Doctor leapt up and soniced the ramp shut again. Just in time, too, as Rose felt the swoop of her stomach that signaled takeoff.

"Sorry," O apologized, catching his breath as he got to his feet. "I've never been good at sprinting."

The Doctor seemed surprised at this "What?"

Rose frowned at her, but Ryan jumped in before she could ask. "Come on, Doctor. We're taking off."

"In the main cabin!" She ushered them all through to the empty main cabin, making their way between rows of seats.

Gratefully, Rose collapsed into one, giving a reassuring smile to the Doctor when she glanced down. "Just need a mo'," she explained.

"What are we actually going to do?" Yaz asked, leaning on another seat.

Rose shrugged. “Sit tight. See where he's going?” She suggested.

The Doctor turned her attention to O to deal with what had been bothering her. “Never been good at sprinting?” She asked.

O shrugged a little sheepishly. “I was the last one in every race at school.”

Rose felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as the Doctor shook her head. “No, no, no. I read your file. You were a champion sprinter.”

There was a moment while O seemed to consider the situation, then... Rose could almost see the way he shifted, going from the man she had met at MI6 to something… else. “Mmm. Got me. Well done.”

Rose’s stomach dropped even as she stood, a fresh wave of adrenaline kicking in, fear overriding her relief and shaking legs.

The others were still confused. “What’s going on, Doc?” Graham asked.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor lied, Rose knew. She knew what was going on, just didn’t want to admit it. To herself or anyone else. 

The man that had been O was smirking. “You’d best take a look out the window.”

The others moved to do as he said, peering through the small portals, but Rose stood frozen to the spot. Rose didn’t think she’d seen this Doctor so frightened before, but whatever was out there was doing a damn good job of it. She stared at O in growing horror as he moved forward, and Rose could practically see the spinning gears in her head.

“Bit Wicked Witch of the West,” O's tone was gloating, smug. “But you get the gist. Maybe. Maybe not.” He snuffed, not seeming concerned either way.

Denial was all the Doctor had in the face of this. "No."

He was taunting her now, words sharp as knives, even as he bounced a little, the energy so different from just moments ago. “Oh, come on, Doctor, catch up. You can do it. Come on.”

The Doctor looked terrified. “Oh.”

If possible, his smirk grew even more smug, turning into barely-contained laughter. “That's… that's my name, and that is why I chose it. Oh, so satisfying. Doctor, I-I did say look for the spymaster. Or should I say spy…” Rose held her breath, saw the Doctor do the same. “Master?” He let out his own shaky breath, though his was born of satisfaction at the looks of horror from the two people who knew exactly what that meant. “Hi.” He gave a cheeky little wave.

The Doctor’s voice was shaking too. “You can't be.”

“Oh, I can be. I very much am.”

Rose was frozen to the spot, couldn’t move, could barely breathe, the Doctor struggling to do the same.

“So what's going on, then? He's not really O?” Ryan asked.

“I'm her best enemy.” He laughed, pushing past the Doctor. “Call me Master,” he told the others.

Graham looked taken aback. “Call you what?”

“Master?” Ryan repeated quietly, increduclously.

The Doctor looked like she was trying not to throw up. The Master approached the others, still smirking. “Me and her, we go way, way, way back. Don’t we, Rosie?” He reached out to her, and she flinched back.

“I met O,” the Doctor had barely recovered her voice. “So did Rose.”

“I know.”

“ _Years_ ago.”

He was gleeful, almost giddy. “I know!” He laughed again. 

Ryan was still catching up. “But there was an O at MI6. C was talking about him.”

“Yeah. A man very close to my heart.” He paused. “Well, in my pocket, actually. Do you want to see him? It's always good to keep a backup of one's work.” He pulled a matchbox from the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. “Tissue compression, it's a classic.” Like a magician revealing his trick, he pushed the matchbox open to reveal a tiny human figure contained within. 

The Doctor crept towards him as he explained. "Ambushed him on his way to work for his first day. Shrunk him, took his identity and set myself up in MI6.” He sniffed.

Rose didn’t think she could feel more sick, but she was wrong. The man she had talked to, had reminisced about the Doctor with, had been well on her way to trusting… had been the Master the whole time. The Doctor she had married had told her about him, about their history. Yet here he was.

He was still talking, casual in his cruelty. “Surprisingly good staff canteen.” He moved to put the matchbox with its macabre cargo back into his pocket, then paused and tossed it away over his shoulder, as if it meant nothing. 

“I have had a lot of fun,” his energy was manic, bouncing as he came back towards the Doctor, clapping gleefully.

The Doctor turned and ran toward the cockpit. “I need to warn Barton!”

The Master turned and gave the rest of them an almost-comical look.

“He's not here!” The Doctor popped back into the cabin. “Where's Barton? What have you done to him?” She shouted.

The Master did a strange little dance, as if the Doctor’s questions had caused him to panic. It was all a mockery, Rose knew. “Barton!”

Graham, Ryan, and Yaz rushed forward toward the cockpit as well, the Master ducking into a seat out of the way. “Who's flying the plane?” Graham asked.

The Master’s answer was infuriatingly calm. “Wrong question. Check the seat.” He stood and started making his way back down the plane toward where Rose stood. “Cockpit bomb. Short fuse. I can relate to that!” He laughed. 

The whir of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver came from the cockpit.

“Now,” The Master shouted. “Do you really think that I would not make that sonic-proof, Doctor? Come on!” His voice dropped again to a more reasonable level. “Deadlock sealed. And I made sure - no parachutes on board.” 

Rose grabbed his arm. “You can’t!”

He shrugged her off, turning the manic grin on her. “Can’t I?”

The Doctor was focused on the bomb, trying to solve the one problem she thought she stood a chance of solving. “There must be a way!” She focused on what Rose assumed was the bomb in the seat.

Yaz had thought of something else too. “But where's Barton? We saw him coming in,” she pointed out.

“Called away before takeoff. By me!” He struck a pose. Rose wondered if it was meant to look heroic. “Stick with me, Yaz, ‘cause I control... _everything_. Even these guys.” With a whistle and a click of the fingers, he turned, and two of the aliens made of light appeared right behind Rose. She shrieked, leaping away from them. 

The Master laughed triumphantly, punching the air in glee.

“I can't do it!” The Doctor shouted from the cockpit. “Get away!”

No sooner had she braced herself against the door than the bomb exploded, blowing open the door, throwing the Doctor to the floor. 

Everything was a whirlwind of fire and air and noise, everyone holding desperately to what they could get their hands on. The Master seemed to be treating it as a thrill ride more than anything else, whooping. He pulled himself forward using the seats until he towered over the Doctor, sprawled on the floor. “One last thing. Something you should know in the seconds before you die. Everything that you think you know... is a lie.” He let that sink in, straightening. “Got you, finally.” 

Rose rushed at him right as he turned, grabbing her arm with one hand while clicking a device with the other. 

The last thing she saw was the Doctor’s face, and then the plane dissolved around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose's dress is based off of one that Billie Piper herself wore, seen [here](https://i.imgur.com/yeLnzW9.jpg), as are some of the other options she rejects in the wardrobe.


	4. Don't Think of the Danger: Spyfall pt3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose gets taken by the Master, the Doctor gets taken by the Kasaavin, and the plots thicken. Aka where things start to change a little based on Rose's presence in this universe. 
> 
> (Note: there is some violence in this chapter--nothing beyond canon-typical, but it is from a male-coded person to a woman, so just giving y'all a heads-up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra, continuing on our Bond theme for this outing.
> 
> A lot of research went into this chapter. Some of it was summarily ignored for a better story.

Rose stumbled out into the almost-familiar hut that O--that _the Master_ , she reminded herself--had called home as he released her arm. It was subtly changed, the oh-so-human-ish computer set up replaced by other, stranger technology. Barton stood by an illuminated statue, looking mildly surprised at their appearance from nowhere.

Rose staggered toward him, hoping he'd see that something was wrong, that there was a fellow mostly-human person in trouble and help. He stared at her coldly, moving out of her reach as though he didn't want her to even touch him.

Righting herself, she spun to face the Master and nearly collided with him. "No!" She cried, but his fingers were already rough at her temples, pushing into her mind with all the finesse of a sledge hammer. She had her defenses, yes, but this was nothing like anything she had experienced before, quickly overwhelming her. She was left floating in the dark sea of her own mind, only vaguely aware of anything going on around her. Certainly not able to react to any outside stimulus.

The Master dropped her unresisting form to the floor, sniffing dismissively. "There now." He waited for a response from his mostly-human companion, then plowed on ahead when he didn't receive what he felt he was owed. "You should've seen me," he gloated. "I was great! She did not have a clue."

Barton seemed unimpressed, unfazed. "This better work."

"Final calibrations, and then we'll be ready. All our efforts will come together in a moment of beauty." They paused to contemplate something. Rose wondered if it was the artwork. "We'll all have what we want."

"So you know," Barton continued, as if he thought he was the one in charge here. "I don't appreciate last-minute changes of plan as I'm about to take off."

The Master was dismissive, even of his supposed partner in all of this. "A little chaos is a wonderful thing. Allowed me to swat those flies. Grab myself a little _bonus_."

Rose was glad she couldn't shudder, though she felt the trace of the Master's fingers across her cheek. Admiring his ill-gotten 'prize', she supposed.

A phone beeped insistently. The Master pulled away from Rose.

"I've just been notified," Barton said icily. "My plane's about to land at its programmed destination."

"They can't have survived."

In the privacy of her own head, Rose cheered in delight. Of course something as measly as one little cockpit bomb wouldn't take them out, especially not the Doctor.

Barton was deeply unhappy about this turn of events. "You told me everything was foolproof. What's gone wrong?" He demanded.

The Master did not like being questioned like this, snarling back at the other man. "Watch your tone, Mister Barton. I'm not your employee."

There was another alarm--not Barton's mobile, a different alert this time.

"How has she got there?" The Master asked quietly.

"What's happened?" More of that demanding tone from Barton.

This time, the Master reeled in his temper. "Nothing I can't deal with," he insisted. "I'll drop you at your plane. You sort out her friends, I'll deal with the Doctor."

It all sounded so horrifyingly simple, to him. The grind of a TARDIS that wasn't her own, dematerializing into nothingness, swamped Rose's consciousness, and before she knew it she was drifting into full darkness.

\--

“No.”

The Doctor straightened, taking in the silence, the eerie stillness, and her utter aloneness. “No, no, no, no, no.” A litany of refutation, a chant to the universe that she was no longer inside. 

This couldn’t be happening, not again. Every time it seemed all was alright with the universe, that the Doctor had achieved some kind of equilibrium with it, it had to go and kick her in the teeth like this. 

Her friends were trapped on a crashing plane. The Master was back. And worst of all, he had Rose, had taken her right in front of the Doctor. She had had to watch Rose Tyler disappear from right in front of her yet again and the universe kept _doing_ this to her. “Argh!” 

Letting the wordless noise of frustration vent did drain some of her immediate anger, falling into the weird realm around her as it did. It looked like the place that Yaz had described to her, when she had told the Doctor about where she’d been before she’d been zapped back to the hut. There were no zaps of electricity around her now though, the tall columns dark and silent, the air slightly wavery as if seen through a heat-sheen.

Too silent. Fortunately, the Doctor had long had a habit of talking to herself. “Hi, Doctor. Oh! Hi. How are you doing? Good. Just talking to myself to prove I'm still alive.” She paused, then continued. “I was wondering. What would you say to the others if they were here?”

She mulled it over for a second, then, when no answer seemed to come from her surroundings, answered. “Don’t panic.” It was a good rule for life in the universe, that. Though she couldn’t quite recall if she had gotten that from Douglas Adams or if he had gotten it from the Doctor. Could go either way really. “Of course, I'm usually saying it as much to myself as I am to them.”

The Doctor had to believe her friends could take care of themselves, had to believe Rose could deal with the Master. Or, at the very least, survive him. The Doctor had been so _glad_ when Rose had missed meeting him, had been gone for all of those encounters. One of the only things that had made her--then him--a little more okay with Rose being trapped in another universe.

And now he was back. 

It was no use dwelling on that now, though. Not here, where the Doctor was trapped. She had to figure out what this place was, how it worked, how to get out of it--anything would be a start, really. Pulling her sonic screwdriver from her pocket, she scanned around, trying a few different settings before she was sure. “Won't work in here. Why not? Could be a clue. A clue to what?”

The stillness was suddenly broken by a zap of electricity, moving down from one of the pillars and along the, well, she supposed she had to call it ground, for lack of a better word, so far. “What was that?”

Nothing answered her, so she answered herself again. “Interesting. Useful, maybe.”

A second bolt zapped past her, going a different direction. “Another! Even better. What are you?” She crept forward, following the bolt a few steps, continuing to direct her questions to the void. “Pathways? Signals? Synapses?” Where would one find synapses like that? “I could be inside something. Oh, I hope it's not a liver. I hate being inside livers. People always get so offended. What are you doing in my liver again?” That had not been a fun weekend. 

“Hello?” A voice that was not her own echoed through the void. “Hello?” It sounded human, not like the light aliens. “Hello?”

The Doctor took off running in the general direction of the voice, dodging through the fronds. “Hello!” She answered. Maybe not the most creative, but there it was. “Can you hear me? I’m trying to find you… somehow.”

Finally she spotted something that wasn’t one of the same pillars or columns or whatever they were. “Ah!” It turned out to be a young woman in a large, delicate bonnet and a blue dress.

She didn’t seem at all startled by the Doctor’s appearance. “Please be assured all this will pass. I shall be recovered momentarily.”

Her calm reassurance was certainly not what the Doctor had been expecting. Not in this strange place anyway. “When you say recovered, what do you mean?”

“The paralysis will fade.”

The Doctor looked her over, standing, gesturing, breathing, all normal. “You don’t look paralyzed.”

“Not in this realm, but in my earthly aspect.”

“Right.” She was this calm and she was aware that this was not her usual physical aspect. This got more interesting by the minute. “What’s your name?”

“I am Ada.” 

“And what do you think this realm is, Ada?”

Ada looked around, unconcerned. “I believe it to be my mind. Though I have not met another here before.”

That explained why she was taking this so well then. It was hard to be hurt by figments of your imagination, after all. “Then what do you think I am?”

Ada gave her another once-over before shaking her head. “I presume you are a consequence of my thoughts.”

“No. I’m the Doctor and I’m very real. But you’ve been here before?” 

“Many times. When the paralysis subsides, I find myself fully back in my body, restored in the physical realm,” Ada answered easily, before growing curious. “If you are real, do you have your own solution for egress from here?” 

The Doctor took another look around, hoping something had changed before admitting--to herself as much as Ada--”No exit strategy.” Still, nothing to worry about. “Before I leave, I need to work out what this place is.”

Something did change then, the little zaps she had seen before beginning to gather in the columns around Ada. “Oh! Those fragments of light or energy, why are they surrounding you?”

Even these sparks around her did not seem to overly concern Ada. “They are always here with me.” She frowned, as if she was hearing something the Doctor could not. “They place a word in my mind. Kasaavin?”

It wasn’t a word the Doctor had ever heard before, no known alien species or name coming to her. As she watched, the lights gathered more and more thickly, until with a tearing sound, one of those light beings emerged. “Ada, step away,” she warned her.

“Do not be afraid,” Ada reassured her instead. “This is my guardian.”

A few things were becoming clear to the Doctor now, the way her sonic didn’t work here, the lights making up an entire creature, the general strangeness of this place. “This is their realm. This is where they're from. But how did you bring us here?” Like the one they had trapped in the hut, this creature didn’t answer, merely peered at her, so she continued to answer herself. “Unless... You can't be. But you must be. What, gateways? We go through you and arrive in your realm? I say realm. It's not a planet, not really a void. A separate dimension? Are we beyond our... my universe?”

Still the figure did not answer, merely tilting its head as if observing her in turn. It was Ada who interrupted. “Little of what you are saying makes sense to me, but I am concerned you'll be marooned here. When my guardian has returned…”

“They’re not your guardians,” the Doctor insisted. Spies, aliens, something else altogether, yes, but whatever they were doing with this young woman, it wasn’t guarding her.

Ada persisted. “I can offer you my hand. We may leave this place together.”

The Doctor shook her head. “I don’t think that will work.” She honestly had no idea, but there was no reason to think it would.

“How will you know if you do not try?” Ada pointed out. There was really no reason it _wouldn’t_ work either, come to think of it. “Decide, Doctor!”

Taking a leap of faith, she decided, was better than being trapped here for longer with no idea and no way out. She lunged forward, grabbed Ada’s gloved hand, and the realm of the Kasaavin vanished around her.

\--

Everything hurt. From the pounding headache behind her eyes to the deep ache in her bones as consciousness reasserted itself. The rough wood against her cheek reminded Rose where she was, and she sat up with a gasp. 

Immediately she had to close her eyes against the dizzying nausea that threatened to swamp her, but a few deep breaths and she tried again, taking stock of the situation around her.

She was alone in the hut from the outback--the Master’s TARDIS. So many things looked familiar, from the stacks of books and papers and the little kitchenette. But all she had to do was turn and take in the glowering red of what seemed to be the central console to know she definitely wasn’t in Australia anymore. 

Pushing herself to her feet, Rose turned the assessment to herself. Though she was sore from the running and she was definitely going to have a bruise on her shoulder where the Master had dropped her onto the hard floor, she was mostly unharmed. Her dress wasn’t even torn, somehow. Slipping a hand into her pocket, she touched the sonic screwdriver she had built with the Doctor’s help one universe over, relieved to find it still there. 

Curiously, the windows showed not the whirl of the vortex, but an unassuming white stone wall, beyond which she could just see an unfinished pillar poking up into the gray sky. For a moment Rose couldn’t figure out why it looked so familiar and strange, before it hit her. “Trafalgar Square,” she whispered to herself. It was the famous column, still unfinished.

So, London then, but early. How early she wasn’t entirely sure, but there was only one way to find out. 

She was making her way to the front door, hoping that it would open for her, when the Master burst back in through it and she recoiled backwards.

He was disheveled, clutching one shoulder in pain, the tails of his coat--a different one than what he had been wearing the last time she had seen him--singed.

Rose locked eyes with him, then tried to make a dash around him for the door. He moved to block her and she fell back again, watching warily as he towered over her. 

“How- how are you awake already?” He asked, stalking closer. Rose backed up, trying to keep out of arm’s reach. “You should’ve been out for,” he seemed to do a funny little calculation with the fingers of his free hand, then winced. “At least eight hours.”

Rose reached the central console, bracing her hands back against it, smirking at the Master with a boldness she didn’t feel at all. “Yeah well. Surprise.”

He lunged for her, and she saw blood on his hand before it was wrapped around her arm, the other gripping her throat, bruisingly tight. Rose struggled to breathe. This close she could see the seething anger, the pent up rage, the murderous intent. “Tell me **how**!”

Every survival instinct she had was screaming at her to just tell him, do what he said, submit to the Master. Rose had never been very good at listening to those particular instincts. “The Doctor told me about you. About the things you’d done,” she shot back, acting unconcerned despite the situation.

He laughed, startling her, then released her. “Did he now?” He patted her cheek, laughing again when she flinched away. “And what did your little consolation prize tell you, hm?” The manic grin was back as he ducked his head to stare her in the eyes.

“Don’t call him that,” she snapped, lips curling into a snarl.

Before she could do anything more, he had spun away again. His manic energy kept throwing her off balance, never quite sure what he was going to do next. She followed him as he went around to the other side of the console, trying to catch a glimpse of what he was doing--to prevent or hinder him somehow. 

The backhand to her face sent her sprawling to the floor, a hand to the bruise blooming on her jaw, staring up at the Master as he loomed over her. “Guess I’ll just have to do a better job this time.” He seemed gleeful at the opportunity. Rose scrambled backwards, desperate to get away from him, but his fingers clutched at her head, prying her mind open without hesitation or mercy.

Rose threw up every mental defense she had built over the years, pulling on everything her husband had taught her, the things she had learned about her own mind over the decades. The Master tore through these defenses like they were tissue paper, the cackling madness of his laughter pursuing her through her own mind. 

Physically, she could feel the blackness at the edges of her vision, the tingling in her limbs as she fought for air. But still she fled deeper into the recesses of her own mind until there was nowhere else to go.

Then everything was golden light, and she knew nothing more.

\--

The Master jerked back as if shocked, dropping the still form of the girl to the ground again, staring at the hand that had been wrapped around her throat just seconds before. The skin there was slightly reddened, as if it had been burned. 

As he had suspected, the human girl had bonded, somehow, with that bastardized version of the Doctor she’d been left with. But he hadn’t been a full Time Lord, and though Rose Tyler was certainly something more than just human now, she hadn’t had much call to strengthen her latent psychic abilities to any real extent.

None of which explained the violent force with which he had been thrust from her mind. It had been so easy to overwhelm her, to leave her cowering before him physically and mentally, and then… it had been like touching a live wire, whatever it had been. Though somehow maddeningly familiar to him. 

_Just what the hell is she?_ He wondered. There was a subtle golden glow to her skin, even as she lay there in a disheveled heap. The Master didn’t want to touch her, for fear he’d get burned again by whatever force inhabited this girl.

Besides, he still had to find the Doctor. He could pry apart this girl’s secrets later, after he had gotten rid of the Doctor, made sure that she wouldn’t be coming back to plague him.

He had all the time in the world, after all.

\--

The Doctor’s mind was racing at a million miles a second. This was not unusual for her, true, but generally her thoughts were a bit more organized than what they were now. The Master showing up again had certainly discombobulated her. She mourned the deaths of those poor people back at the Adelaide gallery, wished she could have prevented them somehow. She had to have known he was coming for her, suspected anyway. But she certainly hadn’t expected him to find her so quickly. 

He hadn’t brought Rose with him, which was surprising, relieving, and a little bit worrying. She had thought the Master would use her as bait, or a human shield, or just another thing to torture the Doctor with, but no. She hoped Rose was still alive, and was still relatively safe. If the Master had killed her the Doctor was certain that he would have gloated about it immediately, mocked her about losing companions. She had to hope.

The fact that he was in league with those Kasaavin, uneasy alliance though it was, answered many questions. Almost as many as the Doctor still had ringing around in her head. What _had_ the Master meant about ‘news from home’? And what he had said on the plane before that, about everything she knew being wrong? If it had to do with Gallifrey, the Doctor knew it couldn’t be _good_ news, but… 

“Surely we must alert the authorities,” the gentleman who had aided in her rescue insisted, once they were safely (for the moment) ensconced at his residence.

The Doctor shook her head. “The authorities won’t be any help.” Even if they knew what to do with the shrunken bodies of the people who had died, they wouldn’t have any luck tracking down the culprit. That was up to her. 

“Besides,” Ada pointed out. “What would we tell them, Mister Babbage?”

“I have no concept, Ada. I cannot explain any of what I have seen today.”

The name rang a bell for the Doctor, pulling her from the mire of unanswered questions. “Babbage? Charles Babbage?”

He looked nonplussed. “Yes.”

She had noticed the gleaming brass column in the middle of the room before, but now it resolved itself into a delicately constructed machine of gears and dials and glass. “So this must be…” And so it was. 

“My difference engine.”

“Your difference engine!”

More surprise from Babbage. “You know of it?”

The Doctor had always wanted to come back and see this, the original difference engine, hadn’t ever gotten around to it. “Eh, just in passing.” She cranked the lever on top and the brass gearwork inside began to move, numbers and cogs in motion. 

“As yet unfinished. It will count and perform quadratic equations.” He explained.

Its successors would do far more than that, too. But that meant…” If you’re Charles Babbage,” the Doctor surmised, turning away from the machine. “Then you’re not just any old Ada, you’re Ada _Lovelace_ , daughter of Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke, one of the great minds!” 

Ada demurred. “I am Ada _Gordon_ , madam.”

Ah, right, she had gotten the date mixed up, hadn’t she? Occupational hazard of time travel, that. “1834. Of course you are. Well, maybe one day, who knows, you might meet a nice Earl,” she covered. Of course, he wouldn’t be an earl yet, so the Doctor congratulated herself on not giving too much away. “This changes everything! Ada Lovelace in Babbage’s house? You’re clues. You’re important,” she informed them, back to her sweeping gestures.

“I’m… delighted to hear it, madam,” Babbage responded, clearly still confused. 

The Doctor hated to burst his bubble, but. “Yes, it’s not good news I’m afraid.” There was another object in the room given pride of place, shining silver instead of brass like the difference engine. “What’s that?”

The three of them approached the case holding a delicate-looking silver wire-frame figure. “This is the Silver Lady. A revolutionary piece of engineering. But, like all great ladies, she is as much for decoration as for purpose.”

Ada and the Doctor shared a look at that assessment, thinking the same, exasperated ‘ _men_ ’. The Doctor let it go. “How did you come by this?”  
“It was a gift, delivered by a young man who said it was a token of appreciation from his master.”

He didn’t seem to notice the Doctor’s frown at the last word. “Was it.” It was a statement, not a question. Not one she needed answered, anyhow. She moved from the statue to Babbage’s desk where a notebook sat open, with a familiar-looking drawing. “What does it do?”

“It... moves. And on occasion, projects.”

She held up the notebook, showing them the illustration. “On occasion projects something like this?”

Ada was surprised. “M... Mister Babbage, you have seen the same form.”

Instead of answering Ada, Babbage took the notebook from the Doctor’s hand, closing it. “Madam, those are my private notes.”

The Doctor resumed her pacing of the room as she tried to piece everything together. “The Master and the Kasaavin. What are they doing?” The realm where they had taken her tied into it somehow, and Ada had been there before. “Ada, when was your first paralysis?”

She shrugged. “I was 13 years old. That is when I was first transported to the place where we met, and I first saw an apparition.”

“And over the years, the paralysis recurs with the same effect?”

“Yes,” she answered plainly. “No doctor has ever been able to diagnose the cause.”

“Well, this Doctor may be able to.” It wasn’t bragging if it was true, was it? She turned back to Babbage. “An apparition, from this machine.”

“Correct,” he confirmed.

The Doctor was on a roll now. “So, they take you, Ada, multiple times from here and they study you in their dimension, which means they can't be in this dimension for long. But maybe they gain an ally, a mastermind who builds them a machine which stabilises them in this world long enough for them to send spies and to spread their work and start a plan.” Neither Babbage nor Ada interrupted her. Whether it was because they didn’t understand or didn’t want to stop her, it didn’t matter. Not now. “'Cause I've seen the map in his hut. Multiple Earths. Except not. Not multiple Earths. Multiple time periods. These creatures aren't just alien spies on Earth, they're spies through Time, through history, starting with you.”

Which meant she had to get back to the 21st century as quickly as possible. And thanks to the two of them letting her put things together in her own time without questions, she had an idea about just how to do that. 

Pulling out her sonic screwdriver, the Doctor buzzed the case of the Silver Lady, activating it and setting it into motion.

“What are you doing?” Ada asked.

“The man from the Adelaide Gallery will be coming for me. I need to get back to where I came from, find my friends and figure this out.” It all sounded so simple when she put it like that. 

A light creature--a Kasaavin--appeared next to the Silver Lady. For once, this was exactly what the Doctor wanted. “I've only got one way out of here. The same way I came in. If I use my sonic on the Silver Lady, I might be able to force this creature to throw me back to the 21st century. I hope.”

“If this is your plan,” Ada protested, “it is fraught with risk.”

“Where there's risk, there's hope,” the Doctor told her before turning to the Kasaavin. “Deep breath,” she told herself.

She reached out with the sonic, hoping this would do what she was expecting, and had just pressed the button to activate it, when she felt someone take her other hand.

“Ada, no!”

But it was too late, they were gone.

\--

The next time Rose woke to consciousness, she lay still and silent for a moment, controlling her breathing so as not to give away the fact that she was awake, not just yet. If anything, she hurt worse than before, and even that much self-control was difficult. After a moment she decided she was most probably alone in the Master’s TARDIS. It wasn’t in flight, judging by the stillness.

This time she didn’t waste time going to the window to get her bearings, simply staggering for the door to get out as quickly as she could. Whatever was out there was better than being trapped in there by the Master again.

The bright sunlight of an early fall morning lanced pain into her head as the door opened for her. She pushed through, toward a doorway across the street from her. It was half-open when she reached it, and she stepped inside, holding on to a wall to keep herself upright as she made her way through. She felt dizzy and sick, almost feverish.

It was an abandoned shopfront, it seemed, the counters and cases empty with a thin layer of dust on them. There, by a window with half the shutters hanging off their hinges, was what once had been a fairly nice overstuffed armchair, sooty and stained. 

It looked like heaven to her. Without a second thought, Rose curled herself into it. 

She was woken by the voice of a young woman saying, "Please don't be dead."

Judging by the slant of light, Rose figured it that several hours must have passed. She ached from sleeping in a ratty old chair--not to mention everything that had come before it--but didn't feel nearly as bad as she had before. "Don't think I am," she responded groggily, taking in the girl who had woken her. 

She looked young, late teens maybe, with a style that read as mid-centuty-ish to Rose's eyes, a messenger bag at her side. She was eyeing Rose with deep suspicion, but also plenty of curiosity. "Sorry, could you, um. Tell me what year it is?"

"Last I checked it's still 1943. 'Less they've changed the calendar on us now too." Her tone was a little dismissive and Rose wondered who 'they' were.

"Right. 'Course." A peek out the window and its ruined shutters answered her next question--in the distance, Rose could see a particular landmark that would always tell you that you were in Paris. And she could just make out a red flag on it too.

“At least I’m not hanging from a barrage balloon this time,” she muttered to herself.

The girl was still curious. "Who are you?" She asked, actually walking around Rose to get a better look at her, then gasped. "Are you British?"

Rose blinked, nonplussed. "How do you figure that?"

"Your French is very good, but you have a slight accent," she explained, digging in her bag for something. "Plus, dressed like that? In this part of town?" She gestured at Rose's outfit. "You're either mad or running from something."

Rose realized as she spoke that the other TARDIS, the one she had arrived in, must be translating for her, but begrudgingly instead of seamlessly. The girl had a slight accent to her own words, when usually that didn't happen with translated languages. The girl pulled (to Rose's relief) not a weapon but the heel of a loaf of bread, offering it out to Rose.

She was going to demur, insist she wasn't that hungry, but her stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. Grinning sheepishly she took it, tearing a chunk off. "Thanks. I'm Rose, by the way."

Just a moment too late, she realized she should have done something like give a codename, but ah well. Couldn't undo that. The girl smiled back, looking just a little proud of herself. "Jacqueline," she answered, still giving Rose a once-over.

She laughed. "That was my mum's name! How 'bout that?"

Jaqueline came to some conclusion then, clapping her hands together once, briskly. "You know what, Miss English Rose? I am going to help you out."

Rose frowned around her bread. "Sorry?"

In response, the girl pulled Rose to her feet. "I don't know if you had a rough landing or what, but clearly you're not a German, so I'm guessing you're here to help." As she explained, forthrightly, she led Rose to a small staircase in the back that Rose hadn't noticed on her way in. "I may not be a fighter, or have a wireless, or any of that, but I am doing my part."

Despite herself and her concern that this girl seemed quite young, Rose was charmed. "That's very kind of you, but…"

"And tomorrow you can help me put fliers out where the Germans won't see us," Jacqueline carried on, determined.

Rose decided just going along with this girl was probably the easiest course of action at the moment. Though, still… "Think they're gonna notice me, dressed like this."

The long dress she still wore had now been creased by the motorcycle ride, sweated in during their mad dash to the plane, and further wrinkled and dirtied by the time she had spent lying on a floor or in a bombed out building. It certainly did not look its best anymore. Even if it did, running around wartime Paris like this was bound to get her noticed.

Jacqueline had thought about this too though. "I'll bring you clothes, some more food, that sort of thing."

She had led Rose to the third floor of the building. A few of the rooms had holes in the walls or ceiling, and one bit had been burned out entirely, but there was an out-of-the-way corner that would be sheltered from the elements, only one of the walls partially missing, and an internal one at that. She surveyed with a soldier's eye, finding it adequate. She'd certainly slept in worse places, on occasion. Not recently, but still. "I suppose this'll do for now, yeah."

Jacqueline's grin was glowing. "Wonderful. I'll be back in the morning."

"Stay safe out there," Rose called to her as she disappeared back down the stairs.

Alone once more, Rose decided to explore a bit. It turned out that one room over there was a window from which she could see the Master's TARDIS, plopped down in the middle of an alley like a big, brooding chicken. Incredibly out of place, sure, but the perception filters meant no one would notice it unless they were looking for it.

She needed to keep an eye on it though, on what the Master was up to. Stranded in the middle of World War Two with no time machine of her own and no idea of where the Doctor was was still better than being in there, with him. Not many things scared Rose Tyler anymore, but he was shaping up to be one of them. The way he had torn through her mind so easily… it made her sick to think about.

She was about to go back to the other room and try and find a comfortable way to sleep, when the shout of rage echoed up to her. She ducked, pressing herself to the wall beneath the window and praying he hadn't seen her.

"I know you're here, little ape," the Master shouted. Rose pressed closer to the wall. "You want to try and run from me?" He paused, then laughed harshly. His tone was suddenly light. "Fine, yes, okay. Perfect," he spat the word. "When I find the Doctor, I get to tell her that she's never going to see her precious human Rose again, ah." 

He paused again, waiting for a response. None was forthcoming. His laughter, with that manic edge to it, circled up through the buildings. "I wonder. Will it be a bomb? A random patrol? Maybe they'll arrest you for being a spy, oh that'd be ironic." It sounded like he was moving around as he made his threats. "And she'll never, ever know. Ha!"

Though she'd never actually admit it, he had at least one point, small though it was: she didn't know where the Doctor was. The same thing gave her hope though. The Master didn't know where she was either. Obviously she was here, or would be here soon. Rose had no clue how she was getting around without the TARDIS but clearly somehow she was. Meaning the Master's was the only one around at the moment.

All Rose had to do was wait for the Doctor to find her way here, and they could sort everything out. In the meantime, all Rose had to do was survive.

\--

The good thing about the Master pursuing her through time and space meant that at least the Doctor was fairly certain he was using his TARDIS to get around. Which meant that somewhere out there in the nighttime of 1943 was not only a way for her to get back to when she needed to be, but also that Rose might be there. She couldn’t decide if it was better for her to have left the Master’s TARDIS to get away from him or for her to be stuck inside. At least if she was in there, she couldn’t wander off and get into any more trouble than she was already in.

The Doctor and Ada had landed in a bombsite, the drone of RAF planes distinct in the night air above her. The woman who had found them there had hurried them into her small flat, locking the door behind her. It wouldn’t stop the German patrol they had heard, but perhaps it would buy them a few seconds. 

Some of the floorboards of the room were pulled up, revealing a crawl space underneath. “Hurry,” the Parisian said, gesturing for the two of them to climb in. It would be a tight fit, but the Doctor figured it would just about work. She was grateful she wasn’t as tall as she used to be, for once.

The woman had just thrown the rug back over the floorboards and settled into her chair at the desk by the window when the door burst open. “Yes?” The Doctor heard her ask, icily.

There were footsteps, the sounds of ransacking, papers being thrown around, an inexpert and hurried search. “You’re new,” she commented to someone who didn’t answer. The search continued, but the Doctor was pretty sure what they were looking for was down here underneath the floorboards with them, practically staring her in the face.

The sounds of searching stopped. Both the Doctor and Ada held their breath for whatever would be next. A stamp of a foot, and suddenly the distinct pops of machine gun fire filled the space. The Doctor waited breathlessly for one of those bullets to find its mark, but none did. The firing ended and the Doctor heard no moans or cries of pain. The foot stamped again, and the soldiers filed out. The slam of a door closing echoed, and then all was quiet for a long moment. 

The woman rose then, pulling the chair and rug aside again to begin prying up the floorboards. “You’re a lifesaver,” the Doctor told her as soon as her face was revealed. “Got some interesting stuff under the floorboards here. Wireless radio equipment. As issued by the British Special Operations Executive. Very distinct, very large and very difficult to hide. You're not Parisian. You're a British spy. I know that face. Codename Madeleine. Real name Noor Inayat Khan.” 

Noor paused in her removal of the floorboards, watching the Doctor warily. 

She sat up just enough to give an aside to Ada. “First female wireless operator to be dropped behind enemy lines.” She lay back again, her mouth still going a mile a minute. “Very nice to meet you. I'm not where I wanted to be, but I can work with this. Ada, wait till you hear about Noor. She's as impressive as you. You grabbing my hand must have thrown us off course, spat us out here.”

Slowly, Ada answered. “I should like to come out from the floor now.”

Noor seemed to remember herself, continuing to pull up her floorboards until the Doctor and Ada were able to extricate themselves. The flat wasn’t very large, but they gathered again in the small sitting area off of what appeared to be Noor’s bedroom. Noor had some pertinent questions for her unexpected visitors. “Who are you? How do you know so much about me? And why are you both wearing such strange clothes?”

Ada jumped in instead. “That soldier's voice. He was in the Adelaide Gallery. How can he be here?” They had heard him shouting as the patrol pulled up, while they were secreting themselves under the floorboards.

“He's in league with the Kasaavin, those creatures of light.” That wasn’t anywhere near the whole story, but it was enough to be going on with. “I'd hoped to get back to their home dimension, where we met, and then to the 21st century.” Where she would pick up her TARDIS, foil the Master’s plans, save her friends, save Rose, save the world. “But we ended up here instead, which is, you know, 19th century to 20th, it's progress.”

“The Master tracked me down. He not only has a friend of mine, potentially, he also wants me dead, whereas I am a big fan of being alive.” One of the women was no longer listening to her. “Ada? Are you all right?”

She had moved the shutter aside to reveal a Paris landscape lit in the glow of fires and searchlights, the distant sounds of gunfire cutting through the night. “I have always wanted to return to Paris,” she said, almost wistfully.

“It's not at its best,” Noor replied, joining Ada at the window. “Nightly bombing raids. Millions dead. They promised us war at this scale would never happen again, and yet here we are.”

Ada was shocked. “This isn't the first time?”

Right, the Doctor remembered. At least this time _she_ hadn’t been the one to mess up and call it World War II. 

Noor looked at the Doctor in confusion. “Who are you people?”

“We're your allies, I promise,” the Doctor assured her.

“This is the future. A world on fire.” Ada’s voice was sad.

Some reassurance was in order. “These are the dark times. But they don't sustain.” She joined them at the window, speaking as sincerely as she knew how. “Darkness never sustains, even though sometimes it feels like it might.”

She went back to pacing. “I need to turn this to our advantage and get the Master off my trail. He's masquerading as a German soldier. That's low, even for him. Code name Madeleine,” she pointed at Noor. “What equipment do you have here?”

She shrugged. “Only my radio equipment. No gun. No cyanide pill. I'm a pacifist,” she explained.

“Snap! Strong position to take during wartime.” She should know. “Two pacifists and a 19th-century descendant of Byron against the Nazis in Paris and an alien invasion across multiple dimensions. That's a big to-do list.”

Still, though, she wasn’t the Doctor for nothing. “I have an idea. And you two brilliant people are a big part of it.” She clapped her hands together, ready to get to work. “First things first, we’re going to need that wireless equipment you’ve got hidden away.”

Noor went back to her room, thinking as she began to pull up floorboards again. “There was another thing, something that came over the network, yesterday. They were asking about another agent, but it was strange, the way they were asking. It was like she had come out of nowhere, no one knew what to make of it.”

The Doctor’s curiosity was piqued, most certainly. “A British agent? Anything else? Code name or anything?”

Noor hefted the wireless set out onto the floor proper before answering. “I think it was Wolf-something?”

It took a moment for the Doctor to piece this new information together, but already she could feel the grin spreading across her face. “Was it, by any chance, Bad Wolf?”

“That’s it,” Noor confirmed, then jumped in surprise as the Doctor let out a joyous whoop. 

“I knew she had to have wandered off! Ha! Bet that tweaked his nose!” 

Noor looked to Ada to see if she had any clue what the Doctor was going on about, then shrugged, and got back to work. 

\--

Rose’s first night in 1943 had been rough. The whine of falling bombs, the random pops of gunfire, the shouting in the streets, and all she had been able to find was a semi-sheltered corner out of the cold. The strongest part of the building, as she had learned once, had turned out to be the loo at the core of it. It took a little coaxing with her sonic screwdriver, but the tap had produced enough water for her to wash her face and get a drink, at least.

Not that she had much else in the way of creature comforts. The material of her dress was thick, true, but there wasn’t enough of it to cover her fully. She spent her night in a fitful doze, waking up every few moments, expecting to hear jackboots on the landing any moment.

Sunrise arrived with Jaqueline, fresh-faced with a slightly bigger bag than last time. Rose edged out from behind the wall where she had hid upon hearing footsteps, even though they clearly hadn’t been heavy enough for a German soldier. “You came back,” she said, just a little surprised.

“‘Course I did!” Jaqueline was already rummaging around in her bag, beginning to place things on a bare patch of floor. “I’ve got food, some clothes that should fit--you look like you might be the same size as my big brother’s girlfriend--and those fliers, like I said.”

Thanks.” Rose hesitantly scooped up the first bundle that Jaqueline pushed over to her, retreating behind a wall with it. It proved to be a skirt, blouse, and an over-large gray woolen cardigan that Rose was pleased to see had pockets. 

As Rose pulled off her dress--it was definitely looking worse for the wear--and tried on the clothes, Jaqueline kept talking. “So I was thinking that even though you’ve probably got contacts you need to make and things you need to do, that maybe you could spare a day or something helping me out. Get the lay of the land and all of that.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Rose had spent some of her sleepless hours last night considering what, exactly, she was going to do. She had to find the Doctor. In a city at war, where she was a foreigner, relying on a teenage girl for help. Her only lead, at the moment, was the Master’s TARDIS. She would have to stay close to that, to watch it in case he left without her or something.

The pockets of her dress might have been slightly transcendental, but the cardigan’s certainly weren’t. Still, she transferred as much as she could of the necessities into there: sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, and cell phone. She tucked the chain with her TARDIS key and wedding ring on it securely under the blouse, then stepped out for Jaqueline’s inspection. “Well?”

The girl gave her an appraising look, then nodded. “You won’t get any points for high fashion in _grandpere_ ’s cardigan, but at least you won’t stand out so much. Though,” she gave a look at Rose’s shoes, not adding anything.

Rose considered it for a moment, then asked, “Don’t suppose you’ve got a knife?”

She did, in fact, nothing more than a small pen knife, but it did the job to get the ostentatious bows off the front of her shoes. She knew the TARDIS would forgive her.

The next thing out of Jaqueline’s magic bag was a canvas tote. Before handing it over to Rose, she took a small stack of papers--more anti-Nazi cartoons--and stuffed it in. Rose squished the dress up small, not caring if it got wrinkled, and stuffed it into the bag, then looked to Jaqueline. “Now what?”

Jaqueline smiled. “Now we avoid the Germans!”

Rose shook her head, almost laughing. “Now we avoid the Germans.” She followed Jaqueline out into occupied Paris.

The most tense moment of the day was when the two of them had ridden to the next metro station and there, checking bags and papers at the exit, were German troops. Jaqueline had done a one-eighty, pulling Rose back into the underground station. The train had already left, and the platform was abandoned but for them. Jaqueline checked her watch, then hopped down into the dark beyond the station’s lights. 

After a moment’s hesitation, Rose followed. Jaqueline seemed to know where she was going as they followed the narrow ledge of a path through the dark. They moved quickly, and it was only a few minutes before they emerged into the white-tiled haven of another station. When this one proved free of soldiers (at least, ones checking bags), Jaqueline and Rose continued.

It wasn’t long before Rose had the routine down pat. It was fairly simple: enter an apartment building, make sure no one saw you, put the fliers under or on as many of the doors as you could, then leave. They would skip around, never going to the next building over, always keeping an eye out for anyone who might spot them or ask questions. Always keeping a free ear for the stomp of hobnailed boots. 

They shared a light lunch, halfway through the day, in an out-of-the-way alley sitting on empty crates. The cold rabbit stew was not half bad, though Rose thought it needed salt, but she refused the chicory ‘coffee’ after trying one sip of it. 

All through it they chatted. Mostly Jaqueline, though Rose kept up with her well enough. It wasn’t just the name that reminded her of her mother, she thought. 

Soon enough though, the afternoon was wearing on and they had run out of fliers. “I should go,” Jaqueline said reluctantly. “I got in trouble for coming home so late yesterday, I shouldn’t push my luck.”

“Thank you,” Rose said sincerely, pulling the girl into a hug. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help.”

Jaqueline hugged her back, then released her. She looked Rose over once more, with her borrowed outfit and strange tools, then nodded firmly. “I’m hoping you all will return the favor.”

Rose nodded back. “Vive le France,” she called to Jaqueline’s retreating form. She hoped the other TARDIS wouldn’t translate that strangely. 

Jaqueline waved back at her with a brilliant smile before disappearing around the corner.

Rose turned her feet toward where the Master’s TARDIS still lurked, and decided on the next part of her plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in learning more about wartime Paris and how women lived, on all sides of it, I highly recommend _Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation_ by Anne Sebba. You might even find some familiar faces in there.


	5. When You Return to the Night: Spyfall Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things come to a head: Rose and the Doctor are reunited, Barton and the Master's plan is foiled, and certain revelations come to light. AKA the last part of Spyfall (except for one scene which I will elaborate on further at the end).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking almost an entire extra week with this chapter. My poor kitty decided now would be the purr-fect time to get sick, so most of my writing time was taken up by taking her to the vet and/or fretting over her. Fortunately she's doing just fine (even if she hates her cone) and I was able to write this one last chapter.

The next day, Rose skipped out on a check for the fourth time in her life. In her defense, it was the first time she had done so knowing she was intending to do so when she went in and, well. She had been extra careful to choose a restaurant that catered to the “Grey Mice” as she had heard the female troops stationed here called. A quick flash of the psychic paper and she was in. A flutter of her long lashes and the (true, though not in the way they were thinking) implication that she was waiting for someone and they’d left her alone for the whole meal.

She figured none of them would want to admit her existence, let alone her conning them out of food and rations that she hadn’t paid for. It was a little bit exhilarating, if she was perfectly honest. If she was lucky, she would be gone from this time and place in no more than a few days and would never be back again. 

She hoped so anyway. Having to smile and play polite when interacting with anyone wearing that particular uniform was nauseating, to say the least. She had developed quite the poker face over the years, if she did say so herself, but this was… trying.

Rose spent most of that second day trying to gather information. It may not have been her time or her city, but if there was one thing that Rose had always been good at, it was talking to people. She had even happened across a hair salon that, due to having no electricity and so no indoor lights, was operating on the stoop out front. She confessed straight away that she had no money with which to pay them, but the gentleman running the place coaxed her into at least letting him give her a trim while she listened to the gossip around her. 

Rose came off of that stoop with a new coiffure and a renewed sense of hope about the people in Paris. Tales of small resistances, like Jaqueline’s cartoons, were more common than Rose had ever dreamed, so many here doing their little part to fight the Nazis in their own everyday sort of way. She might not have been able to pay in francs or reichsmarks, but some of the tales she told of England and what she remembered about this Earth’s history was more than enough to give them hope. Even just hearing that the Brits and Americans were planning something big in the next year or so struck a chord with the people gathered there, and Rose took off into the afternoon with a spring in her step and a grin on her face.

That night she returned to the Master’s TARDIS, scouting it from a distance before picking her position. A rooftop, but not the one of the building she had slept in the night before. She didn’t want to be _too_ easy to find. 

The small alley square where the Master’s TARDIS lurked like a fat, squat spider remained silent all that night and into the next day. Rose only ventured far enough to nick what little bit of food she could find (it turned out that the hairdresser had been absolutely correct about Monsieur Gardet being involved in the black market after all) before returning to watch, and wait. 

If nothing happened by tomorrow, she’d go out looking for the Doctor more actively (though the tricky bit would be avoiding the Master), she resolved. 

\--

It had been many, many years since the Doctor had used a wireless setup like this. Despite that, her Morse code was perfect and crystal clear in her mind, even if she wasn’t using it right this moment. She would, later, the message she’d get Noor to send out. (There was at least one advantage to the Prosper Network having been compromised already, at last.)

Right now, it was just four dots. To anyone else, it would have been a mindless string of the letter ‘h’, repeated again and again, into infinity. To her it echoed the pulse running through her veins, the thump of her hearts, the constant drumming in her chest--and not just hers. 

“That's not a code,” Noor pointed out, watching the Doctor tap away on her machine.

“Not to you,” she explained. “If this works, I'm going to need you to find something for me. Maybe someone.” A few more series of four taps on the wireless, pausing a moment between each series. He had to be out there, somewhere. “This is a very personal code. The rhythm of two hearts. Only a few people would get this.”

She doubted that Rose, however long she had been here and however long it had been since she had wrested herself free from the Master, had found herself a wireless unit of any kind. The Doctor hoped she was okay. But the quickest way to know for sure, she knew, was this. Was to talk to the Master, was to trick him into revealing himself, and hope she found Rose along the way.

Or that Rose would find her which, the Doctor was willing to admit, would be far more likely. She was good at that sort of thing, her Rose Tyler. 

Before the Doctor could contemplate whether she really had the right to call Rose “hers” anymore, four answering beeps came across the airwaves, into her ears. Then another four. She grinned. “That got his attention.” She concentrated, using parts of her (frankly magnificent) brain that hadn’t been stretched in a while. “He’s not so far. I can sense him,” she told her companions. Then, only to him, she established contact.

_Contact_ , came the response. _Old-school._.

“You're not the only one who can do classic.” She knew that Noor and Ada would only be getting one side of this conversation anyhow, but it also felt rude to leave them out of this exchange entirely. So she opted for a middle ground, speaking her responses outloud and telepathically.

_So, how are you holding up without a Tardis, or your friends or a hope? A fugitive in time?_ He sounded smug. Nothing new there then.

“All right,” she conceded. “You've come all this way. You've got me cornered. I'll meet you. No troops. No soldiers. Just us.” No soldiers, no allies, no potential hostages. She was pretty sure he didn’t have Rose anymore, but if he did, this would certainly get him to bring her out as both barb and bait. 

_Where?_

There was only ever one place it could have been in gay Paris, even in the middle of the Nazi occupation. “Where do you think?”

\--

By the third day, Rose was becoming restless. She figured the Master wouldn’t have landed too far away in time from where the Doctor was going to, but she didn’t know for sure. He also hadn’t returned to his TARDIS in the last two days, not that she had seen anyway. Though she had heard rumors of a new commandant having been assigned locally that everyone was still trying to get a read on. Even for an everyday citizen not formally involved in the Resistance knowing the local leadership that the Germans had installed could be the difference between getting through another day and… not. 

Or so she had heard. 

Finally, she resolved to herself that if the Master had not returned by nightfall, she would see about getting back into his TARDIS. Flying it was likely not an option, for a few reasons, but perhaps she could convince it to give her some information on where the Doctor was, or what was happening. 

Information was in high demand, here in Occupied Paris. Sometimes, when you were fighting an enemy that seemed so overwhelmingly powerful things seemed hopeless, information was the best weapon possible. So she intended to get as much of it as she could.

After all, she might need to rescue the Doctor. 

Nightfall came, and Rose put her plan (such as it was) into motion. The perception field of the Master’s TARDIS seemed to be holding, as the few people out on the streets hurried past it without seeming to see it. Rose only hoped it would cover her too, as she casually walked toward it. 

It was past curfew by now, but Rose knew that if you just looked like you knew where you were going and what you were doing, people tended to ignore you. Regular citizens, anyway. She didn’t know if that would work on Nazi patrols, but if she was lucky, she wouldn’t have to find out.

Sidling up to the door, tried the handle, cursing under her breath when she found it locked. Pulling her own sonic screwdriver from her pocket, she took another look around the street to make sure no one was around before keying it on. A brief whirr and pink light, and she heard the lock snick open. 

Not a second too soon, as she heard footsteps approaching. Quickly, Rose slipped in through the doors, keeping one open just a crack so she could hear. 

The footsteps paused, then a voice asked, “How does that fit here?”

The fact that someone had noticed the Master’s TARDIS, despite its perception filter, piqued Rose’s interest.

“She did say, look for something anomalous,” another voice answered. 

Rose’s breath caught. _She_. Taking a chance, Rose stepped out of the TARDIS, getting a good look at the two women who had found the machine. One looked like she belonged in 1940s Paris, but the other was wearing a dress that hadn’t been in fashion for over a hundred years. Rose smiled as the women stared at her. “You must have been sent by the Doctor.”

The Parisian looked more suspicious of her than the other woman. “How did you know that?”

“I’m Rose,” she answered easily. “I’m a friend of the Doctor’s. Now come inside before someone sees you.

Once all three were inside, Rose mostly shut the door again, still leaving it just that tiny bit ajar for lookout purposes.

“I’m Ada, this is Noor,” the woman out of her time said, apparently deciding to trust Rose. “The Doctor gave us a...device.” She held, in her elegantly gloved hands, what was obviously--to Rose--a cell phone.

“Here, let me.” Rose held out her hand and Ada, after a look to Noor, handed it over. She wasn’t entirely sure whose phone this had been, but the Doctor was the first on the speed-dial when she keyed to it. 

Someone answered on the first ring, the whirr of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver coming through. _”Sent it to voicemail,”_ the Doctor’s voice said. _“Probably just asking if I've had an accident in the last five years.”_

Rose knew that the Doctor wasn’t talking to her, keeping silent and holding up a hand to Ada and Noor when they gave her questioning looks. Who was she talking to?

_”They hate it when you give them a list, though, don't they?”_

_”Why didn't you die when the Kasaavin attacked you?”_

Rose gasped, recognizing the voice instantly. The Doctor was with the Master, and Rose was stuck on the other end of a telephone line.

_”Me and Yaz, both time travellers, fizzing with artron energy, and my DNA not matching the rest of humanity, we confused them. And I don't think they're as stable in this dimension as they'd like to be. What deal have you made with them?”_

_“I showed them and Barton what was possible. They helped me lay a trap for you, and I raised their ambitions. Of course, ultimately the Kasaavin are just the mechanism. They... they don't have my vision, you know?”_

_“And what vision is that?_

_”Maximum carnage.”_

_“I don't understand.”_

_“No, no, I know you don't. But you will. And of course, the best thing is everyone loses except me. Barton and those creatures do the dirty work, and once they're done, I get rid of them, having destroyed your precious human race in the process. And I have your ‘special friend’ to boot. I had such fun exploring her little human mind. No, not exploring, what’s the word…_ pillaging _. So fragile, those jumped-up apes you pal around with. Win-win-win, all for me.”_

_Rose had to grit her teeth to stop herself from doing something foolish like shouting. It wouldn’t affect the Master and if the Doctor had kept the phone call connected without letting him know for a reason, then it would give it away immediately. How _dare_ he try to use her against the Doctor? _

_Maybe the Doctor knew that he was bluffing, at least to the part about Rose. _”When does all this stop for you? The games, the betrayals, the killing?”__

__“Why would it stop? I mean, how else would I get your attention? When did you last go home?”_ _

_It was a hell of a subject change. The Doctor sounded just as confused as Rose felt. _”What do you mean?”__

__”I took a trip home, to Gallifrey, hiding in its little bubble universe. Not sure how to describe what I found. Pulverised? Burned? Nuked? All of the above. Someone destroyed it. Our home, razed to the ground. Everyone killed. Everything burned.”_ _

_Rose couldn’t help the gasp that came out of her mouth, hoping no one on the other end of the call had heard that._

__”You're lying.”_ Seemed the Doctor didn’t believe him._

__”You should really take a look. Oh, wait, you won't be able to. I just thought I'd let you know before I…”_ He trailed off._

__”Can you hear voices?” The Doctor asked._ _

___”Why are there police coming up the stairs?”_ _ _

__The Doctor’s answer was bright. _”Oh. That's me, and one of Blighty's bravest radio operators. Very good at sending messages, particularly fake ones designed to be intercepted. Now, finish what you were saying!”__ _

___”What have you done?”_ The Master’s voice was a roar of rage and the phone call cut off. _ _

__Rose folded up the flip phone, jumping into action. “C’mon, let’s see if we can get this TARDIS to help us out a little.”_ _

__Noor and Ada followed her over to the central console. With the Master occupied with the Doctor, there was no chance of him coming back to interrupt them right away. “What is this place?” Noor asked, both of them looking at the strange technology packed in here with subdued wonder._ _

__“It’s called a TARDIS,” Rose explained, placing the phone down on the console. If she could convince it to work, maybe she could get a location trace on the Doctor. Even if she couldn’t go get her, she could at least try and help from here. “It’s a machine from another time and place and if I can just get it to…” She trailed off, hesitantly manipulating a few lighted controls. The interface stayed stubbornly in circular Gallifreyan, but Rose had worked with that enough in the past that it was more annoyance than hindrance to her._ _

__“There she is!” The map of Paris was familiar even to a Londoner like Rose, the basic shape of the river and outline and all. The little red dot that this TARDIS had traced her phone to moved steadily toward the stationary red star Rose figured was their location. “She’s not so far away. You two go out there, see if you can spot her.” She smiled at Ada and Noor. “Just, y’know, duck back in if there are any patrols. You’ll be fine.”_ _

__She went back to trying to coax this TARDIS into letting her do more than basic information, maybe even get ready to fly. It was a long shot, but the sooner they could get out of her, the better Rose would feel about everything._ _

__“Over here,” Noor’s voice called to the Doctor._ _

__There was a bit of softer conversation that Rose couldn’t catch before the Doctor pushed open the door. “Knew you could do it, my best secret agents--” She stopped at the sight of Rose over by the console, grinning brilliantly. A moment later they were running to each other, meeting in the middle of the room in a fierce hug. “Knew you had to be alright.”_ _

__It sounded to Rose like she had been trying to convince herself of that. Rose gave her an extra squeeze as reassurance before they let go. The Doctor turned to the other two women. “I see you met Rose.”_ _

__“She got us into this house--this machine,” Noor confirmed._ _

__Ada still had unanswered questions. “Why is this machine so important?”_ _

__The Doctor was in motion again, practically bouncing up to the console. “This is our way back to finding my other friends and saving humanity.” She was grinning brightly as she started manipulating controls, directing Rose to help where she could. “I know you think I'm mad, but give me five minutes and you'll think I'm the sanest person alive.” Rose snorted and the Doctor gave her a mock glare._ _

__“I’d call that an overstatement,” Rose teased._ _

__The Doctor couldn’t hold her glare, melting back into a grin. “Yes, well. I said the Master's arrogant, but arrogance can trip you up.”_ _

__Pulling out her own sonic screwdriver, she gave the console a quick buzz. Begrudgingly, the same map that had been displayed on the wall of the hut back when it was a simple hut appeared on the console. Then, more hexagons began to appear with portraits. “I know what this is,” she explained. A temporal map, showing every significant person in the development of computers through history, starting with you, Ada. This is the plan. See?”_ _

__“No,” Ada, Noor, and Rose chorused._ _

__Ada fixed on a particular word. “Wh-what is a computer?”_ _

__The Doctor looked chagrined. “Oh, forget you heard that word, otherwise I've just disrupted the whole of history.”_ _

__“Again,” Rose added, smiling back at the look the Doctor shot her._ _

__She was right back in it though. “Okay. Ah, my brain's fizzing. Good. The Kasaavin posted an agent on every person on that map, because that's what spies do, what Barton does. They gather all the data. Where does the DNA fit in? Kasaavin, technology, DNA. How are they all connected?”_ _

__“Human DNA,” Rose clarified._ _

__The Doctor looked delighted. “Oh! Human DNA! That's what they were testing.”_ _

__Noor looked at Ada and Rose, the confusion clear on her face. “How much of that did you understand?”_ _

__Ada could only shrug and shake her head, not having gotten much more than Noor herself, but Rose just laughed. “Welcome to life with the Doctor. “_ _

__“Ada,” the Doctor in question called. “You remember that statue Babbage had, the Silver Lady? Barton had it in his office too. I know it’s important somehow, but…” Her fingers flew across the display._ _

__Rose smiled reassuringly at the other two women before moving up to the console herself, ready and able to help. “So what if we follow it? Through history like?”_ _

__The Doctor grinned back at her. “Perfect! Rose Tyler, still a genius. Here, hold this down,” she gave over control of several glowing buttons on a panel over to Rose as the Doctor input what appeared to be coordinates. An image of the statue in question appeared on the clear screen, glowing in silver lines._ _

__“Hold on,” Rose said, furrowing her brow. “I saw that, in here. The Master had it.”_ _

__“Bingo.” The Doctor swiped up on the display with a flourish, sending the Master’s TARDIS into the Vortex. Clearly she was missing the tangible controls of her own ship, compared to this much sleeker interface._ _

__Moments later, they landed. The Doctor answered Rose’s quizzical look with an almost sheepish grin. “This one’s designed to be flown by only one person,” she explained._ _

__“That explains a lot,” Rose teased, grinning back at her cheekily. Neither noticed the look that passed between Noor and Ada._ _

__The Doctor shook her head, but it was good natured, before she straightened the lapels of her black coat and strode out the doors. Rose, Ada, and Noor followed dutifully._ _

__They emerged in Barton’s office just as the Doctor finished sonicing the hidden cameras that Yaz and Ryan had missed before. “Should give us a half hour or so. Enough time to let me deal with this.”_ _

__She turned to the Silver Lady, gleaming on its pedestal in a place of pride. Applying the sonic to that, she soon had the glass cover off of the wire mechanism. Another setting and the Doctor had a scan of the device._ _

__“So what’s it do then?” Rose asked._ _

__Ada answered her as the Doctor scanned again, presumably with a different setting. “It dances, and occasionally projects those creatures of light.”_ _

__The Doctor was prying a panel off of the front of the pedestal--it appeared that the circuitry continued down into the base. “It’s part of the Master’s plan--Barton’s, the Kasaavin’s, whoever’s plan--it’s not just gathering data, what’s it doing with it?” The other three didn’t answer. “Oh!” The Doctor clapped her hands, whirling to Noor. “Spies! They don’t just gather intelligence to have it, they gather it to _use_.”_ _

__Noor nodded, still bewildered._ _

__“Gathering data, putting it into use,” the Doctor continued, turning back to the device and pulling a carefully-selected bunch of wires out. “And that’s where the Master comes in. And the DNA.”_ _

__“Wait…” Rose put in, trying to remember an article she had read once, years before and a universe away. “DNA data storage?”_ _

__“DNA data storage!” The Doctor crowed triumphantly, grinning madly at Rose for a moment before applying the sonic to the wires she held._ _

__Ada and Noor were looking more and more lost. “DNA? Like genetics?” Noor ventured._ _

__Rose nodded, taking up the task of explaining while the Doctor was busy doing… whatever it was she was up to with the machine. “Yeah. It’s basically a little code inside every living cell, telling it what to do. But if someone were to change that code…”_ _

__“Then all sorts of information could be stored,” the Doctor summed up, stuffing the wires dhe had been working on back into the casing, then refitting the panel and sonicing it closed. “Mucking up every other instruction in there, but you’d have your data.”_ _

__At her gesture, Rose helped her lift the glass cover back over the pedestal. It looked exactly as it had before they had arrived. “There we are then,” the Doctor said brightly, smiling at her three current companions. “Time for a little hop to the future.”_ _

__Neither Rose, Noor, nor Ada understood exactly what it was the Doctor had done, but they dutifully followed her back into the Master’s TARDIS for the next step of her plan._ _

__\--_ _

__A gray sky glowered over the old hangar that they landed outside next. This was where the instrumentation said the Silver Lady was, so this was where they had followed._ _

__The hangar doors stood open, and Rose was able to pick out the Master’s voice as the four of them approached the Doctor in the lead. “Conversion and transmission. We're transmitting Kasaavin energy around the world all at once into every device, hitting every human being and erasing all their DNA simultaneously.”_ _

__Entering, Rose saw energy crackling out from something on a pedestal to what looked like Yaz, wrapping up her arms, crawling with light. Rose was about to run to her when the Doctor put a hand on her arm, stopping her._ _

__Rose looked questioningly at the Doctor, but she was watching, rapt._ _

__“I can't let go of it!” Yaz cried._ _

__Only Rose was close enough to hear the Doctor, saying something under her breath. “C’mon, come on, please…”_ _

__The Master was in full-on gloating mode. “First her. Then you,” he pointed to Ryan, then to Graham, menacingly. “Then you.”_ _

__Rose was about to shake off the Doctor and go do whatever she could to help (even if it was only to punch the Master in his all-too-smug face) when the Silver Lady stopped, suddenly still and silent._ _

__“Ugh!” The Master stood in front of the unmoving Silver Lady, all his braggadocio drained in an instant. “Don’t do this.”_ _

__The Doctor strode forward, all confidence and swagger, Rose, Ada, and Noor arrayed behind her. “Sorry. I think that might have been me. And I'll admit, it was close.”_ _

__As she spoke, the tendrils of energy that had been surrounding Yaz broke and snapped, as if cut off from their power source. She jerked away from it, rubbing her hand momentarily. Within seconds though, she had her super-cool facade back up and took her own place between Ryan and Graham._ _

__Rose could tell that the Master was furious, that seething rage beginning to bubble up to the surface again. “No,” he hissed._ _

__But the Doctor was in her element now, explaining just how she had foiled this latest plan of his. “Two can play at embedding things in history. I knew the Silver Lady was important, and that you built it for a reason, but I couldn't work out why. So I traced its movements through history. And when I saw that Barton now owned it, we stopped by his office. Middle of last year, using your Tardis, I built a fail-safe into that machine. Planted a virus. If it ever detected the massing of a Kasaavin army within its systems - total shutdown.”_ _

__As if summoned by their name, an army of Kasaavin emerged from the Silver Lady like arcs of electricity, filling the hangar in eerie formation. Rose felt a chill go up her spine again, even though she knew it was something very different from the Cybermen._ _

__The Master was regaining a little bit of his smug demeanor. “You're going to have to explain yourself to them, Doctor.”_ _

__The Doctor was unfazed. “Am I? Listen, you lot,” she raised her voice to address the Kasaavin directly. “ I've rigged the Silver Lady to exile you back to your own dimension. This planet's off-limits. Oh, and you know that deal he made with you?”_ _

__She held up her sonic screwdriver, and, with a whirr, played back part of the conversation that Rose had overheard between the two. _”Barton and these creatures do the dirty work, and once they're done, I get rid of them, having destroyed your precious human race in the process. Win-win-win.”__ _

__The Kasaavin moved closer, and the Master’s face drained as he knew the jig was well and truly up. “Oh.”_ _

__“That's your name. Don't wear it out,” the Doctor quipped brightly. “That's the trouble with modern technology. You never know when you're being spied upon.”_ _

__The Master turned to the advancing Kasaavin, holding his hands up placatingly. “Don't... don't listen to her.”_ _

__Within seconds, the Kasaavin had enveloped him and, as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone, taking the Master with them._ _

__Rose couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face at having taken care of the Master, though it faltered a bit when she caught the icy looks Graham, Ryan, and especially Yaz were giving the Doctor._ _

__“What?” The Doctor asked._ _

__Yaz shook her head. “You have a lot of explaining to do,” she told her._ _

__The Doctor was indignant. “Like what?”_ _

__Graham picked up from there. “Like who are those two? And are we being replaced?”_ _

__“No,” the Doctor answered in a tone indicating that that was the silliest thing she’d ever heard. Rose rolled her eyes, but held her tongue, at least for now. “This is Ada, this is Noor. 1834, 1943. They helped me out. I'm dropping them back in a sec. And Rose, well,” the Doctor gestured in a ‘you know’ sort of fashion._ _

__“How did you manage to save our lives on the plane?” Ryan asked._ _

__“The plane,” the Doctor repeated blankly, then, “Oh, I forgot.”_ _

__“You forgot?” Rose repeated as the Doctor turned to run back to the Master’s TARDIS._ _

__The Doctor’s only answer was a shouted, “Come on!”_ _

__The four of them piled back into the Master’s TARDIS, the Doctor immediately at the console putting in coordinates. Rose shut the door behind them. “I can’t believe you _forgot_.”_ _

__The Doctor grimaced at the console. “I was a bit preoccupied at the time.”_ _

__Rose shook her head laughing. “So what’s the plan now?”_ _

__With a shudder, the TARDIS landed, and the Doctor swept toward the door. “Rose, come help me!”_ _

__Shooting an apologetic smile over her shoulder to Noor and Ada, Rose complied. They emerged this time into the vast, echoing space of what Rose realized was not just another airplane hangar, but an assembly building for airplanes. It seemed to be either the night-shift or a holiday, because they seemed to be the only two people in the entire place. The Doctor had made a beeline for some tools and, as soon as Rose joined her, started handing her things._ _

__“I’m assuming,” Rose said, gamely taking the stack of aluminium plates handed to her and piling them on top of the vice already in her arms. “One of these planes is destined to be one Mr. Barton’s?”_ _

__“Right in one!” The Doctor hefted a blocky machine in one arm and what appeared to be a rolled-up projector screen in the other. Rose couldn’t exactly complain about being over-burdened if the Doctor was in the same situation. “Best way to stop a plane crash--never let it go down in the first place.”_ _

__Hauling everything back to the TARDIS, the next half hour or so was a whirlwind of productivity. The Doctor made several little plaques to be affixed under the seats, with extremely specific embossing. While Rose was putting those in place, hyper-vigilant for any security or anything that might wander across, the Doctor filmed the video to be shown to the terrified passengers of a suddenly not-so-doomed private plane._ _

__Rose returned right as the Doctor finished the last playback. “There we are then. All ready to go.” She produced her sonic screwdriver from the pockets of her (increasingly tattered-looking, though Rose was in no state to judge) coat, pressing it against the camera for a brief whirr._ _

__“All done?” Rose asked, brushing off her skirt from the invisible dust she was sure it must have picked up, crawling around on what was to be the cabin floor of the only mostly-built plane._ _

__“Almost,” the Doctor replied cheerily. Buzzing back over to what Rose thought might be the same laptop she had been using back when they thought this was nothing more than O’s hut, she hit a few keys with a flourish, printing out a sheet of colorful paper._ _

__It barely had time to dry before the Doctor was snatching it up and slotting it into the sleek plastic sheeting next to her next machine. With a whirr, this one much gentler than that of the sonic, the paper and plastic fed into the machine, the Doctor watching with delight. “I love a laminator.”_ _

__Rose couldn’t help her fond laugh. “You really don’t change, do you?”_ _

__There was a wistfulness she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice entirely. She knew it caught the Doctor attention. But as she saw the Doctor’s eyes dart to their other two companions, Rose knew that this wasn’t the time for that conversation._ _

__“So,” Rose returned her attention to the plan. “They’ve got a video, printed instructions--”_ _

__“Laminated,” the Doctor corrected._ _

__“ _Laminated_ instructions, and an app. And they’ll be able to fly the plane from there?”_ _

__“Yep.” The Doctor brandished the sonic in one hand and the freshly-laminated instructions in the other. “Easy peasy apple squeezy.”_ _

__Rose was going to protest that she was pretty sure the phrase didn’t go like that, but the Doctor was already out the door to put the final flourishes on the plan in the plane. She was shaking her head in bemusement when she caught Noor’s look. “What?”_ _

__“Nothing…” Noor seemed to consider for a moment, before continuing. “I assume you must be the one they were talking about on the network, in Paris?”_ _

__Rose blinked, bewildered.”What do you mean?” She wasn’t aware that there had been any chatter about her during her brief stay there._ _

__Noor shrugged. “You know how some operators get codenames from nursery rhymes--one that had appeared just before the Doctor… the big Bad Wolf.”_ _

__“Oh.” It had been many years since Rose had stopped counting when and where that phrase had shown up, again and again, her alter-ego spreading itself through the universe so thoroughly it had leaked over into others. “Yeah, that’s…. That’s me.” She tried to play it off as something halfway between a ‘ta-da’ sort of reveal and a chagrined confession._ _

__“You’ve known the Doctor for a long time then?”_ _

__Rose couldn’t help but smile fondly, absently touching one hand to the other, the memory of a single whispered word as clear to her as the day it was spoken. “A lifetime.”_ _

__Ada and Noor shared a look that Rose could not fathom the meaning of. Noor was about to say more, before the doors burst open again and the Doctor’s frenetic energy took over._ _

__“I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready to get home,” the Doctor declared, striding to the console._ _

__Ada looked the most relieved out of all of them. “I should very much like that.” Rose supposed it had been a long, strange day for her and Noor._ _

__The Doctor glanced at Ada, before the machine landed again. “Right then, one more pitstop first.” She glanced up at Rose, who had taken what felt like her usual place at the Doctor side, next to her at the console. “You know the interesting thing about his TARDIS?” the Doctor asked, busily manipulating the lighted haptic controls._ _

__“What?” Rose asked._ _

__The Doctor smirked at her, flinging a light control with a flourish that would have been much more impressive with a physical control. “It has a perfectly functional chameleon circuit.”_ _

__Her gesture ended at the door, indicating that they should exit. Rose’s headshake was full of fondness, even more than any exasperation it contained for this flamboyant, vibrant alien she loved. She followed Noor and Ada out into a California twilight, overlooking the same vineyard from Barton’s estate._ _

__Once outside, Rose turned back to look: the Master’s TARDIS was no longer a house. Instead, sitting just off from a pillar was a double, down to the same paint and plaster. When the Doctor shut the door behind her, it melded seamlessly into the ‘stone’ of the rest of it._ _

__“Come on.” The Doctor strode confidently to the short fence overlooking the vineyard and smoothly hopped over it. She was about to stride off toward her ship when Rose pointedly cleared her throat, stopping her. Rose climbed over a little more carefully, her and Noor just a little hampered by their knee-length skirts._ _

__After helping Ada (and Ada’s dress--19th century fashion was its own creature, Rose knew) over the fence the Doctor turned her footsteps to where she had left the TARDIS in the vineyard. Rose caught up and grabbed her hand, and the Doctor smiled back at her._ _

__As they approached, Rose pulled the key out from her blouse to unlock the door without prompting. She did notice the Doctor’s eyes on her as she did so, and realized--belatedly--the other object she carried on that chain._ _

__The Doctor didn’t say anything right that moment though, so neither did Rose, pushing open the door and ushering the other two women in. If anything, Noor and Ada were even more impressed by this than they had been by the Master’s TARDIS-disguised-as-house._ _

__“Magnificent,” Ada breathed, taking in the crystal cavern with unconcealed wonder as the room lit up in soft golds and luminous blues, the TARDIS welcoming the Doctor back._ _

__Noor was better at hiding her emotions, but she was just awed by the place as Ada. “But it was just a box.”_ _

__The Doctor was already flitting about the console, so Rose took this one. “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.”_ _

__“Meaning,” Ada said slowly, placing a cautious hand on one of the crystal struts. “The outer dimensions and inner dimensions do not, necessarily, correspond.”_ _

__Rose blinked, thought about it, and laughed delightedly. “It’s bigger on the inside, yeah.”_ _

__“First stop!” The Doctor announced, throwing a lever with a flourish that was much more natural here in this machine of physical switches and dials. “France, Paris, nineteen forty-three, about an hour and 26 minutes after we left.”_ _

__Rose grinned at her and the Doctor gave a quelling look back (muttering about how that was _one time_ and neither saw the look that, even after only a few hours with them, had been exchanged between Noor and Ada a fair few times. _ _

__Noor clasped Ada’s hands in her own, the gesture halfway between an embrace and a handshake. “Strange and short as our acquaintanceship has been, it was a pleasure to meet you.”_ _

__“Likewise,” Ada returned._ _

__Noor seemed to shake herself a little bit right before stepping out of the TARDIS doors into her small Paris flat, the half-light coming through the window an early dawn or firelight. It was the quiet of the wee hours of the morning out there, Rose slipping out through the doors after Noor and the Doctor._ _

__The Doctor followed Noor all the way to her bedroom, Rose standing in the doorway. “This is where I leave you,” the Doctor pronounced._ _

__After a brief moment of consideration, Noor set her shoulders. “Answer me one question. The fascists, do they win?”_ _

__“Never,” Rose said firmly and immediately. Noor looked at her questioningly and Rose nodded, pouring all of the sincerity she had in that plain truth. “Ever.”_ _

__The Doctor nodded too, giving Noor a smile. “Not while there's people like you.”_ _

__She reached out with her hand toward Noor, and Noor flinched away. “It’s all right,” she reassured. “I'm just removing me from your mind.”_ _

__Oh-so-gently, the Doctor placed her fingers to Noor’s temple and she allowed it. A moment later Noor was sinking to the bed, guided by the Doctor’s hands as she collapsed down into sleep. There was a sadness in the Doctor’s smile, Rose could see that much. “Bonne chance,” the Doctor murmured._ _

__Rose thought she seemed a little subdued, but she shook it off as Rose followed her back to the TARDIS for their next stop._ _

__Soon enough, they had landed again, this time in the middle of a sitting room, still and empty at the late hour. Rose lingered in the doorway this time._ _

__"Doctor, does this have to be the end?" Ada asked. Rose bit her lip. There had to be a reason the Doctor hadn't asked Ada to come along, even for just a little bit, but Rose couldn't help but think that she'd make a pretty good traveling companion. "All the things I've learned, the advances, the machines. I would dearly love to see more."_ _

__The Doctor seemed chagrined and a little reluctant. "I'm afraid I need to do something about that."_ _

__"What do you mean?"_ _

__The Doctor approached. "I'm ever so sorry, Ada," she apologized._ _

__"Doctor, what are you doing?” Ada flinched back._ _

__The Doctor was calm as she explained. “Wiping the things you shouldn't have knowledge of. Including me.:_ _

__“But I want that knowledge,” she protested. Despite this, the Doctor continued her approach. “Don't take it away. Please don't take it a…”_ _

__The Doctor’s fingers made contact with Ada’s temple. In the doorway of the TARDIS, Rose flinched away as her stomach clenched. The Doctor caught Ada easily and carefully laid her down on a handy chaise lounge, making sure she was fast asleep before withdrawing. “Sweet dreams, Ada Lovelace,” she murmured._ _

__Quietly, the Doctor came back to where Rose stood in the doorway, closing the TARDIS’s door on Babbage’s house with a soft click, then bounding up toward the console._ _

__“She doesn’t need a preview,” the Doctor told Rose merrily as she followed. Rose could tell the bounciness in her tone was masking any tumultuous emotions she might have felt about having to do what she just had. “She figures it out way before anyone! The first one to see potential in things like that difference engine, to work out what it could be. What they can really do. Computers start with her.”_ _

__Briskly she sent them into the time vortex, Rose joining her at the console. “What happens to Noor?” Rose asked softly._ _

__The Doctor focused on the controls for a long moment. Rose couldn't work out whether it was to try and remember or to avoid telling her. Finally, she blew out a breath. “The life expectancy for wireless operators in occupied France was six weeks, at the time.”_ _

__It was a roundabout way of telling her without really saying properly, but Rose understood. She placed a gentle hand on the Doctor’s arm. “But she… she does make a difference, right?”_ _

__The Doctor smiled at her sunnily. “‘Course! The Prosper network was one of the biggest and most important wireless networks in the whole war! She was a big part of that.”_ _

__Rose could tell there was more that she wasn’t saying, but the Doctor moved on before she could ask. “Some really extraordinary people, those two.”_ _

__She had thought that the Doctor would take them right back to London, to pick up the ‘fam’ and continue on through space and time, but it looked like something was bothering her. Rose had started to pick up on the way the Doctor was now, even after only a day or so. So many things were echoes of or sideways versions of the Doctors that she had known before. Even if she had only known two-ish versions of him, she had helped the Doctor back to himself from war and death and destruction, two times over. She had helped him find himself again and, in the process, learned more about this particular alien than just about anybody else living knew--she figured, anyway. Something was eating at her. “Doctor?”_ _

__“We should change,” the Doctor said briskly. They were in the time vortex for now, Rose knew, a sort of standby state for the TARDIS._ _

__Rose looked down at the outfit she had worn for the past three days, grimacing a little at the dirt and stains and general worn-ness of it all. “I suppose… But then we’re going back for your friends, yeah?”_ _

__“Yep.” The Doctor started to shoo Rose off to do so but, at Rose’s pointed look, followed her into the halls instead. They parted ways far sooner than Rose remembered them ever doing in the past, but then the TARDIS was always rearranging herself, she supposed._ _

__Rose changed quickly, throwing on jeans, plaid button-up and flats for the first time in days. Sighing at her hair in the mirror, she pulled it into a messy bun. There would be time to deal with it later, she hoped._ _

__Despite how quick she had been, the Doctor still managed to beat her to the console room. She was stalling though, Rose saw, idly flipping switches and peering at displays with no real interest until Rose stepped back into the room._ _

__“So,” Rose asked, making her way down the stairs to the Doctor. “Where we off to next? Pick up the others?”_ _

__“We could--” she paused, looking up at Rose and she could see the thoughts whirling away in her head like a merry-go-round. “You heard the conversation, right? From the Tower?”_ _

__Rose nodded, frowning as she thought she caught the drift of the Doctor’s thoughts. “The Master, he… he said something about Gallifrey.”_ _

__The Doctor busied herself at another set of controls, trying to look busy. “He was probably lying. Does that a lot, him.”_ _

__“Yeah… Doctor.” Rose stopped her hand with her own, getting the Doctor to look up from the console finally. She was right on the edge, Rose could tell. She wanted to run and run and never come back, never look back, never even think about what was behind her. But if they did that, the question would eat away at her, Rose knew. The Doctor had to see for herself._ _

__“Right.” Suddenly she was busy setting coordinates, a much more productive busyness than before, directing Rose to help her out with dials or switches as needed._ _

__She didn’t need to explain where they were going: there was only one possibility. It had seemed impossible when the Doctor had told her. All her long life Rose had thought that Gallifrey had been destroyed at the Doctor’s hand. The first and worst cataclysm that her husband had never been able to atone for… and the Doctor had undone it._ _

__All too soon, Rose thought, they had landed._ _

__The Doctor was staring at the TARDIS doors like she was working up the nerve to go open them, to see what lay beyond. Rose bit her lip as she watched, but decided this was maybe one thing she couldn’t help with. Finally the Doctor nodded to herself, heading for the doors at a brisk clip, Rose following behind._ _

__Rose knew something was wrong the moment the Doctor opened the door, standing stock still as she stared out at the landscape beyond. It was a broken world under an orange sky, smoke rising from ruined buildings, the great glass dome of the citadel cracked and shattered. The devastation was reflected on the Doctor’s face as she stared out at her ruined home again._ _

__Again and again and always._ _

__“I never…” she began, finally, trailing off. She tore her eyes from the shattered scene to look at Rose. “I never wanted you to see it like this.”_ _

__That seemed to be the Doctor’s breaking point, clutching the door frame as she crumpled._ _

__“Oh, Doctor.” Rose gathered the Doctor up in her arms. There was a second’s hesitation before the Doctor moved, clinging to Rose as she fought the tears and lost. Wordlessly, Rose soothed her, held her as she had once held another version of the Doctor, her heart breaking for her all over again._ _

__Eventually Rose was able to coax her over to one of the crystal pillars surrounding the console dais, sitting down with her. She didn’t let go of the Doctor’s hands though. Even the TARDIS had picked up on the mood, the lighting subdued to a low, cool blue. Rose was about to suggest they go get a cup of tea or something when something in the Doctor’s pocket bleeped at them._ _

__Confused, the Doctor removed a small disc-like object from her jacket pocket, staring at it as it bleeped again and began to glow._ _

__“Geo-activated,” the Master’s voice said from the other side of the console. Rose and the Doctor were on their feet in an instant, rushing over to where a hologram of the Master had appeared at the top of the steps that led deeper into the TARDIS interior, one of the few areas that still glowed with light._ _

__“If you're seeing this,” it continued, “ you've been to Gallifrey. When I said someone did that, obviously I meant I did.”_ _

__Rose snarled, not caring that the hologram couldn’t see her. “Bastard!”_ _

__He continued undisturbed. “I had to make them pay for what I discovered. They lied to us, the founding fathers of Gallifrey. Everything we were told was a lie. We are not who we think, you or I. The whole existence of our species built on the lie of the Timeless Child.”_ _

__The Doctor stumbled, pressing a hand to her forehead. Rose was at her side immediately even as she fell to her knees, as if she could almost shield the Doctor from the Master. “Doctor?”_ _

__The hologram of the Master was leaning over, as if he knew what this was doing to the Doctor, lording it over her. “Do you see it? It's buried deep in all our memories. In our identity. I'd tell you more, but…”_ _

__He straightened, hands on his lapels. “But why would I make it easy for you? It wasn't for me.”_ _

__With that, the hologram vanished. Rose and the Doctor stared for a breathless moment, willing there to be more, hating what there had been. Then, with a wordless cry, the Doctor threw the disc across the TARDIS, pieces scattering and ricocheting._ _

__Rose placed a cautious hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, flinched back when the Doctor started, almost snarling at Rose. The expression melted swiftly into panic, then confused, then the shuttered, un-feeling mask that Rose had seen too many times before to ever be fooled by it._ _

__The TARDIS was silent, not even the ship attempting to comfort the Doctor as she stormed to the console, slamming at levers and throwing dials like it was the ship that had wronged her. A brief shower of sparks and she yelped, pulling her hand away and planting it on the console, breathing hard, still for a moment._ _

__Slowly, Rose approached, then reached out, placing her hand on the Doctor’s back. Beneath it, the Doctor tensed, then slowly relaxed, slumping defeatedly. Rose worked her arms around the Doctor’s waist, hugging her from behind, until she was able to rest her cheek there, feel the Doctor’s breath as it slowed, the double-heartsbeat she remembered from oh-so-very long ago._ _

__After a small eternity the Doctor moved, turning to place her hands on Rose’s arms, her head hung low so Rose couldn’t see her face. “We should,” she swallowed, then rallied. “We should go. Pick up the fam.”_ _

__Rose bit her lip, but knew that this wasn’t the time to talk. The Doctor was going to run and, god help her, Rose was going to run right alongside her. As fast and as far as she could go. “Alright.” She flashed a brief smile she didn’t feel, giving the Doctor’s arms one last squeeze before she was pulling away. “Let’s go.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Yes, I changed a little bit here: instead of the Nazis, the Doctor has the French police pick up the Master (and doesn't disable his perception filter because... well, because fuck the Nazis, and I don't think the Doctor would ever work with them, however indirectly. Yes, there were still (nominally) French police at this point, separate from the Germans. Not that the police were much better but still. Not literal Nazis. So.
> 
> Also the very last conversation between the Fam and the Doctor is going to take place in the NEXT FIC (omg), which is going to be, of course, Five Planets Where the Fam Didn't Ask Where the Doctor is From and the One They Did.
> 
> And all of that is before we get to Orphan 55 and the massive overhaul that's getting. Yes, Rose is in it for the long haul, so's Rose, so's the Fam... come along, won't you?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta readers, they rock. And to the boy for letting me hash out plot details with him. Any mistakes still here are mine and mine alone.


End file.
